


If I Could Only

by S_IRIS



Series: Words Can't Say What Love Can Do [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Sexual Tension, Sherlock Holmes & Molly Hooper Friendship, Slash, Student Sherlock, Teacher John, Unilock, editing incomplete and done only till CH 6, previous chapters being edited as we speak
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 18:51:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 161,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1658783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_IRIS/pseuds/S_IRIS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes never expected to fall for anyone. . . certainly not his Anatomy professor. But will Dr. Watson reciprocate his feelings?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd and unbritpicked, and I'm more familiar with the US university and of the "Publish or Perish" mantra but I've read that that sort of thing doesn't really exist in the UK, so feel free to point out any errors that you find in the story, I'll be most grateful!
> 
> Occasionally, John's career will continue to clash with the two systems very badly because of an overabundance of reliance on Wikipedia, so if any of the Brits who know the UK university system happen to trip here, again, I'll be very grateful if you point out any errors :)

It was the beginning of the new term. Sherlock had topped again, and he was getting very bored of it. He looked at the A levels of his annual report sheets from his secondary school days as he lay in his bed cosily, under layers of sheets, fully clothed and ready before time for the first time. . . there was A or A* in almost every single of them. He had this weird habit of taking out his old grade reports and laughing at how miserable he used to make others and their mundane lives for making his life miserable in the first place. All his grades were the same, and he hated the regularity, the uniformity of it . . . except for the parts which said "Responsibility". . . etc.

Physics: A*

Chemistry: A*

French (his brother made him take it even in Sixth Form): A*

 

Reading down, Sherlock came to the more interesting fields for marking. . . They always were so diverse in their grades. He decided that he liked his social grades more than his cognitive ones.

Responsibility: a straight E

Discipline: a beautiful U

Interest In Class: Sherlock thought that there wasn't any letter in the English alphabet which could give a definition to this aspect.

Participation in school activities: D . . . hell no, he started to protest inwardly, Sherlock had participated in Chemathlon and represented his school in. . . Well, almost nothing after Year 9. . . He tried not to recall that, except for the brief delight he had felt when he saw Mycroft's look of complete shock as the latter stared at his pinpoint pupils and his desiccated body.

Regard for School Property: Again . . . no alphabet in the English language.

Interaction with peers: Fascinating subject, he tried hard but . . . sadly G again. . . He still needed improvement in that, perhaps make that a U at least.

Overall remarks:  _Although a very bright child_  (Sherlock huffed at 'child'),  _he lacks direction and motivation_. . .

Sherlock frowned at that and suddenly sprang up from his bed. In ten minutes, 221B Baker Street looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. Or a typhoon. Or a cyclone. Or all three of them. He finally found what he was looking for: his Lower Sixth annual report sheet. He smirked at the 'Overall Remarks' column. The teacher had actually written the same remark for the Upper Sixth one as well. Word to word.

And now, here he was, the second term of university awaiting him. He was a sophomore, was what his mummy had happily called him after she had finished with squeezing him a giant grizzly-bear hug while Mycroft watched, amusement not even beginning to cover what emanated from his smug expression. Sophomore, the American term for second year, which regularly reminded him that he still had a year to go in uni before he would be free to do anything he wanted to. He liked uni more, and less, than secondary school. University gave him more freedom, made him seem like more of a nobody.

Being nobody was something he wanted and didn't want as well.

Sherlock had a love/hate relationship with university. The first time he had set his eyes on the lab, on the sophisticated equipment, which was, of course vastly better than what had been there in secondary school . . . he still remembered that excitement, the excitement to finally be able to get a hands-on on all of it, the feeling where he could see molecules dancing inside his head, 3-D ball stick models, the orbitals, the feeling of being powerful. . . knowing that finally he was in a place where he wouldn't be singled out for being smart, and where he could be as clever as he wanted to be. He felt like he could write a book on it all, the day he felt that PhD might be an option if he got to just  _work_ on it. It had simply blown him away.

The good thing about university was that not all people were jerks there, like in secondary school, where they made it a point to _be_ jerks to everyone. But then, there were some bad eggs everywhere, but Sherlock had survived the first year, thanks to an extremely cautious Molly Hooper by his side who pulled him away at the right moment, especially when Sherlock blurted his deductions out in an attempt of "small talk" with people. But it was better than Secondary School at any rate. University was full of adults who paid little to no attention to a tall dark-haired, lanky nineteen year old sitting peacefully with a little mousey-haired twenty year old girl who sometimes wore cat-patterned jumpers and got weird looks from some people around.

Speaking of which . . . Molly hadn't arrived yet. Sherlock always insisted that he should drive, seeing as Molly was new to driving and easily distracted by the sound of her mobile phone, which chimed 'notifications' all the time. And Molly always insisted that she could do two things at once easily, which applied to most things but not driving. Definitely not driving.

He looked at his watch: twenty minutes to nine. His first class began at half past nine but that would be skipped because of the freshers' orientation programme, he thought with a sigh. He wished skipping uni altogether could've been an option sometimes, but it wasn't. He really did not want a certain fat git to climb up the stairs and drag him away to his house for such a trivial excuse. He was happier here, with Mrs. Hudson. He liked old ladies, however tedious and chatty they could be. They fussed around him and loved him, and always made sure that he was cosy and comfortable, and that they remained his housekeeper, despite their claims to the opposite.

A horn blared in the street. Although it was rush hour and there were many horns blaring in the street, it was only Molly in Sherlock's experience who in her excitement could press the horn that hard. He grabbed his bookbag and his cell phone, smoothed down his short hair (Mrs. Hudson had insisted on a haircut and he was down with flu so he really couldn't protest) and donned a jumper over his shirt to hide the coffee stain, rushing down the stairs speedily to greet her and her second-hand car.

"Hi Sherlock!" she waved at him happily, while discreetly pointing at someone sitting beside her: Gavin or. . . G somebody, her boyfriend, probably, because Sherlock did not bother to commit that to memory. Sherlock rolled his eyes and threw open the door to the seat next to the driver.

"Get out, or I'll have to sit on your lap!" he announced loftily. He didn't understand what Gavin was doing there. He didn't even go to St. Bart's or any other university. Then he remembered that he worked in an automobile shop two streets away from the uni building. He didn't even like him. He always took Molly away from him and distracted her from her much-needed study time.

Molly and her boyfriend stole a look at each other. She looked embarrassed, "Sherlock," he recognised it as her pleading voice; "you can take the back seat. Please—"

"No!" he said firmly, "I always sit in front. I never sit in the backseat," He threw a murderous glance at the aforementioned inviting seat, "Gavin, go behind," he tried his best to be polite. "I always sit in the front. Besides, we're getting late," said he, very self important.

"It's Greg," said he uncomfortably, gritting his teeth.

"Don't bother," he smiled extra-politely at 'Greg'. "Now get out or I'll have to sit in your lap, which I assure you isn't a pleasant experience at all."

Molly grew red to the roots of her hair with embarrassment and looked at Greg sadly. Greg attempted a placating smile and squeezed her hand. Sherlock rolled his eyes, because they looked like they were being separated for eternity, instead of only ten-fifteen minutes. Unable to contain any longer, Sherlock threw open Molly's side of the door, "You go back too," he ordered. Molly looked puzzled.

"You are in no condition to drive," he drawled. "Go behind on the back seat with Graham. . . I'll drive."

Molly smiled; it sounded like a good deal, and she didn't have the heart to correct Sherlock on Greg's name this time. Sherlock ignited the engine, taking one look in the rear view mirror at the happy couple weaving their fingers together in the back seat. He wanted to draw their attention to the third person in the car with a little cough like Mycroft usually did, but he rolled his eyes instead when he saw how content Molly seemed.

Although throughout the journey, Sherlock did not really let them forget that he was there. Whenever Greg grew a little too comfortable and leaned in to kiss Molly, Sherlock took a sharp turn, making Greg's head smack against the glass, and making her burst into giggles. She figured that since Sherlock had no idea about human emotion that he couldn't be doing this on purpose, but Greg could knew better, and he sent him dangerous death glares via the dashboard mirror while Sherlock simply grinned away like the Cheshire Cat.

They reached the campus just before it struck nine thirty. Molly gave Greg a chaste goodbye kiss as they strode past the university sciences building centre and loitered around the cafeteria canteen, where Molly ordered a cold hot dog for herself as a sort of an "after-breakfast" and Sherlock sipped from her ice tea just because he could. They could see the crowd gathered outside the auditorium and swerved the other way, not wanting to be the "friendly sophomore and your seniors welcoming you to St. Bart's" to the poor freshers at all.

"When's the class. . . or any class?" Molly bit into her hot dog while Sherlock scrolled through his Facebook feed full of Obama and ISIS memes. Precisely why he hated social media

"As soon as this orientation nonsense ends," he replied in a preoccupied tone.

"We could've gone," she sighed wistfully, throwing a resentful sidelong glance at Sherlock. She revelled in the sense of being a part of the seniors now, and longed to feel a little superior over the first-years during the interaction with them, but Sherlock was going to have none of it.

"Dull."

"You remember ours?"

Sherlock did. It was the most obnoxious gathering he had ever been to. The first senior who had come up to welcome them to St. Bart's had begun the most awkward speech in the world with, "I was an A-hole, I am an A-hole, and I'm probably going to remain an A-hole for the rest of my life. . . but if you ever need any help in Physics, I'm there".

Or something like:

"We here at mountaineering club welcome you to St. Bart's. We actually run a—er—couple of hikes in Wales during the winters, but then last year we had, um—we had some problems where we, uh—had seven members go and we had five members come back. . ."

Sherlock simply scoffed at the memory.

"Never mind. . . so, d'you think we'll be free by recess?"

"Well," he shut his phone off, scratching his head untidily, "You might be asked to parade around with the idiots to teach the prospective idiots about how to be idiots—"

"Sherlock!" Molly's scandalised voice rang out. "Those  _idiots_  are our peers."

He nodded, as if that was what he was trying to say, "Exactly."

 

* * *

 

Before recess, Sherlock and Molly had had only one class each, Mathematics and Molecular cell biology respectively. Sherlock spent the rest of the time all alone in a queue for his library card (which had been taken from him by some seniors in a meagre show of power over him in his freshman year but Sherlock didn't try and claim it back because it was useless for him anyway, but now it turned out that the university required the previous years' library card as a temporary ID of some sorts till they're issued proper IDs) and contemplating the fine amount, which Molly had told him had increased to ten quid.

Sherlock had been pouring over an online article in the digital source section of the library when he was recognised and thrown out of there with a warning to never ever come back. And now he was in the canteen waiting for Molly to arrive and pour over her notes, but all that came to him was a text. From Molly.

**_Will join you in recess. Out with Cassie._ **

Sherlock did not bother to think who this new Cassie person was. It sounded like the name of every new girl in town. He glanced at his watch. He still had twenty five minutes before the start of a class which probably was going to be there: anatomy.

And then he recalled to himself that Mr. Blake had retired from St. Bart's, going by how morose he had looked when he said goodbye to all of them before the summer holidays. Sherlock thought how someone could be even remotely sad while saying goodbye to uni students, especially to him. Well, Mr. Blake had always been an oddity. Even Molly agreed with him.

There would be a new teacher, probably Adams or Moore, as they were the only other people teaching undergrad Anatomy. Sherlock hated the start-of-term classes. Even though they were in the second year of university now, he really didn't know how much his classmates had matured over the summer. Or if they had matured at all, which they probably hadn't.

Or worse, they were probably going to have a newly promoted TA teach them, Sherlock thought resignedly, watching a couple of men at work near the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Students' Union Office. Well, it was only the first day. No one attends classes on the first day, Sherlock thought, because that was the supposed to be a social protocol which did make sense after all. Even if the alternative (spending the day as a free bird and only roam the campus) could be very boring sometimes. The Mathematics lecture had been empty with the exception of himself and a few other dedicated students.

Sherlock gulped down some water and set towards the Arts and Humanities department with the intention to skip the anatomy class and the free hour after that, instead exploring the campus and learning what all routes had been opened and closed, something which he chose to do all alone because Molly kept hammering him with her inane attempts at awkward conversation and jokes about corpses and cats or cat corpses or corpsed cats or whatever. And because she spent half her time teaching some "friend" on her phone about something or other.

The one thing Sherlock wasn't averse to about St. B's was the vast campus. And unlike many other stupid colleges (Sherlock's words), ID'd motorised vehicles were allowed inside the campus, but that was only because St. B's was mostly non-residential, housing only the faculty, the research scholars and a few undergrads.

Since Sherlock had lost his ID, it was useless for him anyway.

On the bright side, you could walk into the campus, or any other building except for the machine shop, the labs, the library and the medical college without an ID. You had the freedom to sit for your exams during any time of the working hours within a stipulated time period. You had five different official college fests over the year, but that was not a very lucrative thing for Sherlock. Molly however longed to go to those social events, longed to be included, but when she saw for herself how awkward she was at these places, she stuck with Sherlock instead.

"Hey."

He turned around to see Molly with her notebook out for him. She had caught up with him near the New Academic Building. "Here's the notes. Don't know if you'll understand a word. . . but then. . ."

"Alright," Sherlock ran his eyes over them, browsing through the words and illustrations and her doodling at the top right section of her pages whever the lecture got too slow for her. He decided that there was nothing new in there and he returned it back to her, instead diving into fish n' chips that she held out for him. Usually he was averse to food when it _was_ time for food. But most of the time, he ended up munching on something or another, maybe a toast or a cupcake or even buttered scones.

"I heard you got into the Production department lab without an ID today," Molly whispered, as if what she uttered was utter blasphemy.

"You should come one day when you're not too busy spending your precious time with the lesser mortals," Sherlock spoke as he crushed the scone into his mouth into a thousand little pieces. Molly chuckled, "Huge _analog_ machines they've got there. Mycroft would be very pleased," he added in an undertone.

"What d'you reckon they're doing?" She asked, subtly pointing at the horde of people gathered around the litany of slogans posted on the too-small notice board. St. Bart's had one of the most politically active Students' Union in the country. Not that Sherlock was interested. At all.

"Whatever anarchists must do," he shrugged, "I'm not interested in activism."

"It's exciting," she bemoaned longingly at the thought of inclusion.

"I'm sure I'll live," he said drily. Mycroft would be pleased at that too. "And it's  _me_ above it all, not the other way round."

"I wasn't talking about you," she muttered to herself, but Sherlock didn't hear it anyway.

They were so busy that Sherlock didn't realise that he was seconds away from crashing into someone. Molly, who had gone several steps ahead, registered Sherlock's absence and noticed the tall gangly teen on the ground, along with a slightly older, shorter man massaging his head, also fallen down, the crisps all spilled on the road.

"Excuse you," was all the man could manage as he let out a quiet curse with that.

"Sherlock!" Molly gave a little squeak and rushed to help him and the gentleman, who had been carrying an armload of papers which were now stained with mustard sauce and mayonnaise. She began apologizing profusely as Sherlock helped her collect those papers under her fierce glare. He made a small stack of it, as Molly gathered the majority of them and began apologizing to the man instead of Sherlock. He was short, blond, had black-framed retro nerd glasses, and he looked like a typical professor should.

"It's okay," he smiled good-naturedly at her, a kind smile, "You shouldn't have to apologize."

Sherlock handed him his papers, staring back at this man defiantly, who was looking at him pointedly, as if expecting him to say sorry for crashing into him. Before Molly could warn the older man that no one ever expected an apology from the great Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock blurted out, "Yes, you shouldn't apologize, Molly. . . come on, let's go."

Sherlock took her hand and marched away, only to be stopped by that man;s voice, "Just keep your eyes open when you walk, kiddo. Could have hit a car."

Molly closed her eyes, praying fervently to any God who was listening to her to not tip Sherlock off. But Sherlock, ever the stubborn brat, frowned at him, "S'cuse me?"

The man strode over to both of them, speaking very patiently and in a very steady voice, with an underlying hint of annoyance, "Well, thanks to you, I'll have to rearrange this stack of papers again."

Sherlock gave him a winning smile, "Then good luck with that, _professor_! I trust I have given you enough work to be busy with for the rest of the lunch," and before the other man could answer, he strode off with Molly at his heels, while she threw back an apologetic glance at him. The blond man merely smiled at her humourlessly, as if thinking why he even resorted to teaching when such students still existed in the world.

"Sherlock?" Molly called his name tentatively, to which he only responded with an acknowledging 'hmm' after they had put a lot of distance between themselves and the blond man, "That man you crashed with. . . was he really a professor or was he a senior you mocked for looking like one? Because if he was a senior, you're going to be in so much—"

"I thought you knew who the seniors were," Sherlock drawled as they ended up near the 60x35 banner saying that hazing was abolished in St. Bart's and were decreed a criminal offence by the Supreme Court of United Kingdom. Sherlock rolled his eyes at that; he knew how true that was. "I thought all you girls made a rank list in the order of all of their "hotness"."

He said "hotness" the way a child would say "butt". Molly blushed pink at his exclamation.

"Even the boys do the same thing, Sherlock, at least girls don't objectify _body parts_. . ." She sat down on a bench in the Green Zone and patted away the dust so that Sherlock could sit beside her. "At any rate, he looked too young to be a professor and too sand to be only a PhD chap in here, you know. . . I mean all we've got is eighty-year olds!"

Rolling his eyes, Sherlock fished out a business card from the pocket of his jeans and handed it to her as he sat down. It read:

**Dr. John H. Watson**

**Ph. D Biology, MSc Biological Sciences**

**07700 900581**

Molly looked appalled, "Where on earth did you get _that_?"

Sherlock simply shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, taking Molly's calculator out of her bag to punch in it the name of anything that was remotely scientific. He was sort of getting addicted to the little challenge that the scientific calculator provided him with, "It fell down. I picked it up as I collected his papers. Might help one day if I wanted to pose as a fake Ph. D. . ."

Molly laughed, giving it back to him. "In that case, you should keep it carefully."

Sherlock smirked. Only she got his humour all the time and that's why he liked her company, besides using her as a smokescreen while dealing with anyone who Sherlock deemed too stupid. Molly glanced at her watch. It was probably time for them to go for their lectures. When she saw Sherlock trying to type in "ununbium" into her calculator, she seized it away, "Give me my calculator back!"

"It's fun," Sherlock pouted.

"You know, other guys type words like. . ." she faltered, embarrassed by what she was about to say, "well, you know."

Sherlock craned his neck towards the throng of freshers near the main entrance of the central library building; the freshers were all probably getting their library cards issued, "Do I look like most guys?"

"S'pose not. . . so, what have you got now?" she asked, running her eyes through her schedule.

"Anatomy theory, Room no. B40," said he disinterestedly, waving his schedule about in front of her eyes while Molly shone with happiness.

"Me too! I wish it's Mr. Blake this year as well."

Sherlock helped her up, trying not to dampen her spirits by informing her that Mr. Blake had left St. B's, or had been kicked out on false charges. "I thought you considered him an oddball."

"Doesn't mean I can't like him. After all, you're an oddball too, but you're still my best friend."

Sherlock froze upon hearing it, and Molly turned around to look at him, slightly worried.

"What happened, Sherlock? You okay?"

Sherlock looked at her as if she was an alien, but in which case also he wouldn't have looked at her so intently. Finally, after minutes of motionless staring and patient take-your-time looks from Molly, he took a breath down his oxygen deprived lungs, and swallowed. No one had ever said that to him.

"I'm your. . . best. . . friend?"

Molly looked at him incredulously, and then broke into adorable giggles. "Of course you are, why else would I put up with you and let you treat me as your personal smokescreen all the time?"

He thought very hard for a moment, "But. . . what about your. . . girl friends? You've got loads."

"They're boring," she shrugged, trying to come across as nonchalant, but her eyes were shining, ". . . and they're idiots."

Sherlock let out a chuckle, "I told you so."

"So, you ready to go to class now?"

He nodded, a little surprised at being called someone's best friend. As he gulped down water down his throat, he thought. Best friends, interesting. . .

"So. . . if you're my best friend. . . does that entitle you to complete my lab journal for me like you did last year?"

"Shut up."

 

* * *

 

John heaved a tired sigh. The kid he had collided with had spilled all the mustard sauce and all the mayonnaise on his notes and his journal. Well, he was only lucky it hadn't stained more than three papers, and he also had a soft copy on his computer. But then, whoever that student was—because he looked young enough to be a student but then he had seen younger looking people who were actually doctorates (And what exactly possessed the younger generation to look younger than they were? After all, they eventually had to get to forty, hadn't they?) —he was sort of rude. Not that he was the only one who was rude. Everyone made a point to be rude now-a-days, as if that were in fashion.

Poor girlfriend, he thought, apologizing for the kid.

John made his way to the PG science building and shut the door of his office behind him, collapsing in his chair. There were so many formalities left to complete, and the recess time was the only time he could do it, which for him was only for a maximum of fifteen minutes because the senior batch's lecture ended at two-twenty which he could always dismiss five minutes earlier and then sophomores had a class right at half past two, their recess timings being different, and then three more hours spending his time hunched over in the lab and completing his report. Half the lecturers had not even bothered to take full classes. And John, just beginning as an undergraduate Anatomy lecturer in there, did not have the habit of teaching a class after only effectively two minutes of lunch. He was not a model on crash diets right before the finale of Britain's Next Top Model. He was a man in the prime of his life. He needed food, actual solid old-fashioned food down his throat, nothing like glucose aids or Kool Aids or whatever.

And St. Bart's campus was so goddamned large that getting lost was a sure thing. How could students make their way through the streets which seemed to curve into themselves? Even though John had a map in his phone, he could make neither head nor tail out of it. He kept ending up in the Arts department, sometimes even near the wicket gate which led to the St. Bart's medical college. University Sciences centre had gradually become easier to find, because it had a landmark, the "Green Zone", a park sort of place where flocks of students usually hung out, about a couple of yards away from the main gate of the University Sciences Centre and the Alumni Association building next to it.

Canteen was a trickier affair, you had a short cut and a long route, and you were likely to get lost via both of those routes. Hence, John had chosen not to take the senior batch's full class, instead seeing for himself all the places _he_ needed to know at the least: the Central Library, the department library, the canteen, the exit nearest to the gate and the Old Building housing the administrative offices.

He closed the door behind him and unwrapped the hotdog in the cling wrap, devouring it as voraciously as he could. He was so hungry, and it was inhumane to burden poor people like him with formalities.

He looked resignedly at the small stack of papers and files and then around at his office, the air-conditioning and the heating, at the paper weight and the pen stand and the desk lamp. This was his life now. It was irrevocable. It had been permanent the day he had gone into biological sciences and realised that MBBS was something he'd better not long for. Had he told his father that he only wanted to be a doctor and that he had no plans for the Army, that would've been a better plan, and he would've done that. He would've, he had been going to do that, not tell them about his enlistment forms and deal with the going away part later. But then, fate had something else stored for him. Something entirely different.

He shook his thoughts away. The office wasn't half-bad, actually, he thought for the hundredth time, as if consoling himself. He had expected a shared office and John had felt relieved when he had come to know that he wouldn't be parting with his privacy. The chair was comfortable, the woodwork of the desk was actually good and they had managed an HCl computer and a decent inkjet on the desk. He wouldn't be uncomfortable with the travelling, not in the least. John was always good with quick packing and travelling and he had become accustomed to it from his doctorate years. That wasn't the problem. Somehow, the office felt small, as did the rest of the classrooms, as did the huge university. So small. Was this him? Was this anything like him? He didn't know what to do here but teach and give out assignments and hope that students liked him. He didn't know.

And John was never good with what he didn't know. He relied on knowledge based on data, on _guidance,_ something a researcher spending half his time thinking about reports and grants never really had. He wasn't good with working alone. But he _was_ alone here, and even though he was a hierarchy above the most of the population in university, he still felt powerless. He wondered how long it would be before he'd fade into oblivion and perish from the intensively demanding nature of his profession.

He wasn't made to be a professor. Sure, he was methodical and persevering, but he was no philosopher. He was more of a quick thinker and leaping into action. He wasn't sure he'd survive, let alone live.

He took his glasses off. Even if the eye doctor said that he had power and he needed those glasses for reading, they somehow muddled up his vision.

 

* * *

 

It took Sherlock two more lectures (and a Molly Hooper being dragged away from him and into some stupid welcoming committee for the freshers)—that was missing the Anatomy lecture and the free period after that—to end up in front of the Sciences centre and enter the building to make his way to the classroom. As he reached the third floor, he could hear immature shouts and screams. Sherlock sighed. No lecturer, probably, and no class. He knew what was going to hit him just as he entered the lecture hall full of rogue students. Well, they could go to hell.

But then sitting in the classroom was a much better option as compared to roaming the campus under the sun, even if it meant being surrounded by people.

It was Organic Chemistry, the last class for the day. He usually settled in the last bench comfortably, arms crossed over the chest, legs stretched to their fullest with Molly beside him, who always wanted to sit in the front rows, but Sherlock never liked the front rows. In the back benches, he could do whatever he liked if he ever got bored with the lecture, plus he got to watch people instead of the other way round, giving him an opportunity to study what puzzled and fascinated him the most (although he never admitted it because it'd be the death of him). He loved interactions, loved chemistry because of this very reason, and the back benches gave him ample opportunities.

But now, being a  _little_  late, Sherlock approached the classroom cautiously, almost tiptoeing his way and peeking into the classroom. The last benches came into view. Most were seated and shouting, noisy and completely out of control. Although they were all very loud and obnoxious, there was no one outside the class, no one loitering in the corridors. It was all very odd. Usually, most of the class didn't bother to be present when a teacher wasn't present, more so when . . .

No, Sherlock could see a figure hunched near one of the desks in the front, leaning over and listening to one of the students . . . was that the professor? He didn't look like one. He looked. . . young, styled hair, purple belt sticking out, top two buttons of his Versace unbuttoned, probably a gift because he had no watch even if he was in the habit of wearing one and was obviously very meticulous and he couldn't possibly forget it, going by the perfectionist ribbon-like tied laces . . . perhaps a junior lecturer who had to get to his next makeout point before time after having introduced to them some rubbish about the SN1 reaction mechanism, the only thing he could read on the chalkboard.

Sherlock was so glad he had almost-missed the class. And so pissed that he hadn't missed it.

The chalkboard was filled with graphs and energy diagrams and labelling, and it had been rubbed with a duster several times over. This was a senior/professor who wrote date on the topmost left corner of the board. Never heard of one like that.

As Sherlock entered the classroom, or rather strutted inside, without any regard for anything, the entire class turned at the metallic screech of the door hinges as he slipped inside. The apparently-teacher also looked up and Sherlock continued walking, taking his usual place in the back benches after spotting a wide-eyed Molly Hooper in the front rows. She did get scandalised over the smallest of things.

Even after Sherlock had taken his seat, the apparently-teacher continued to stare at him, dazed and astonished, his mouth hanging open with a steady blink, right within an interval of two seconds. Sherlock didn't understand. He hadn't done anything extraordinary and yet the screaming had turned into raucous laughter from the boys and giggling from girls' side with the exception of Molly, who mouthed to him a  _Are you out of your freaking mind?_

FHI, he wasn't. He never was.

The apparently-teacher straightened up with narrowed, immensely irritated eyes at Sherlock, turned away towards the front of the classroom and proceeded to take the attendance. Apparently-teacher taking attendance? Well, that was unheard of. . .

When Sherlock's roll number was called out, and when he simpered a smooth "present", the apparently-teacher simply shook his head and it seemed like he marked him as absent. Sherlock gritted his teeth. He had only been late, not absent, and now he was going to have a visit from Mycroft and several calls asking him where he had been. He wasn't a child; he didn't need a bloody chaperone. . .

"Hello class, sorry I'm late. . ." came a breathless voice near the doors. The same blond young man, Dr. Watson, came rushing into the classroom and with a tired sigh, took his place behind the teacher's desk, running his eyes over the students in the class. Well, nobody's sorry when a teacher's late, but poor and probably tragically inexperienced Dr. Watson probably did not realise that. The laughter died down and everyone stared at him, flabbergasted. Some of the girls' necks turned towards him in attention, some of them drooling openly at him.

"Oh wow," one of the girls in front of Sherlock squealed in excitement, "Man candy is back!"

Sherlock frowned.

Who was exactly the teacher here?

He could see traces of chalk on the apparently-teacher's fingers, but he already knew that this Dr. Watson was a lecturer. And what exactly was he doing in an Organic Chemistry class when his qualifications clearly put him as an authority on life sciences?

"Yes, please go back to your place," Dr. Watson motioned towards the apparently-teacher with a dismissive wave of his wrist, evidently mistaking him for a rogue student. "I can't waste any more time like this."

The apparently-teacher didn't budge from his place and Dr. Watson forgot him when he looked like he had more important things on his mind.

"Good afternoon then, students," the buzzing murmur of interest which had arisen as a result of two teachers in the room who both claimed that it was their class was drowned by Professor Watson's mellow voice, "I am Dr. Watson, and I'm your anatomy professor for this session—"

Sherlock straightened up in his seat. Something was wrong, definitely wrong. He fixed his eyes on the back of Molly's head and she turned her head in his direction, eyes rabbit scared, asking him with her eyes about what the hell was happening. As if he knew.

Recognition crossed Dr. Watson's face when his eyes met Sherlock's during his examination of the whole room. He suppressed a smirk, maybe at the thought of finally punishing that smartarse kid for not saying sorry. Sherlock looked coolly at him, body language lazy and uninterested. A frown line crossed Dr. Watson's forehead as his eyes swept over the whole room, but Sherlock couldn't deduce why. Why would he frown at students he had never even met?

"—well then, I thought this was . . . well, never mind then, no need the for introductions then. . ."

Oh no, Sherlock thought dryly, go on, indulge me in your niceties please.

". . . I suppose we'll be taking the roll calls, shall we?" Dr. Watson cleared his throat, "Let's get started, then."

The apparently-teacher blinked twice, and Sherlock tried to figure which one out of them was in the wrong class here, or whether a new protocol of "teaching assistant" had been established in St. Bart's. Dr. Watson spotted the almost completed roll call sheet, and he looked like he was relieved.

"Oh, you must be the CR, yeah?" He nodded at the senior/professor, who kept blinking at him incredulously, "Thank you very much for the roll calls, you can take your seat now. I'll do the rest of the . . . uh, the honours."

"S'cuse me, sir," he began, "this is Organic Chemistry, second year. I'm their teacher."

Dr. Watson frowned at him. "What are you talking about? Look, I appreciate practical jokes, I really do. But not when my time's being wasted. Please go back to your seat, you're not fooling anybody."

"This is my class!" he protested. Sherlock surveyed the situation with mild interest and some amusement.

"What—no! Room number B14, anatomy, third year—"

"No, this is room number B14, organic chemistry theory, second year."

"But," Dr. Watson frowned, "it's  _written_  in my schedule that—"

"You're mistaken, sir," he insisted. "This IS my class," he turned to the students for some support, but most of them were far busy being entertained by the war between the two teachers. Sherlock, for his part, took far more pleasure in crossing his arms over his chest, stretching his legs to their fullest and tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling, "you can check anybody's schedule here."

Sherlock had had his fair share of odd happenings throughout his nineteen-and-a-half year old life, but he had to confess, even though this was stupid, he had never really seen two teachers fight over who wanted to take the class. Had it been Sherlock in the place of any one of them, he would've bolted right out of there and sneaked into the medical college campus and used his authority as a teacher to stay in the mortuary as long as he liked, claiming research. The one he had thought of as apparently-teacher  _was_  a teacher after all, and the lecturer was in the wrong class and he was thinking that their organic chem teacher was a student.

"It  _IS_ Chemistry!" A someone who wished for this to end announced from the other end of the class, "Dunno why this nutter's here, teaching Anatomy!"

Dr. Watson frowned in the direction of the speaker, who had effectively camouflaged himself amongst the many students. Maybe Room number B14 was supposed to be room number B19. He must have realised something similar too because he checked his own schedule and turned a violent shade of crimson right till his ears. If it was awkward for a student to end up in the wrong class, only God knew how embarrassing it was for a lecturer to end up in the wrong classroom and accuse the other teacher of practical jokes. Sherlock felt a sort of sympathy for the poor new teacher as he muttered an incoherent apology to the teacher and the students alike, and rushed out of the class in top speed. The entire class burst into laughter as the senior/professor resumed writing the various kinds of theories constructed to explain the action of catalysts. But no one paid any attention to him, instead straining their ears for the poor Dr. Watson steering his way through crowds, calling out to people to make way for him.

"New teacher, wrong class, coming through!"

Sherlock joined in the laughter too, allowing himself to revel at Dr. Watson's inability to read the schedule properly.


	2. Chapter 2

John's stomach gave a sickly swirl when he came to realise that what he had spent thinking as the completion of one year as a full-time anatomy lecturer had been actually spanned only a week. He had spent only a week, not a year. Seven days. As opposed to three sixty five. He groaned inaudibly.

At least he was thankful that he still hadn't been fired. Although how long he'd be able to go on,he didn't know.

Mondays were okay, he thought. He never really had a problem with waking on a Monday morning, seeing as he wasn't the one to visit clubs and party at nights. That didn't mean that he _never_ had any problems; he wasn't the most outgoing of men, but then he _usually_ didn't have any problem.

Although he didn't know if he could face the second-years today in anatomy after his professor-misunderstanding the previous week.

John went about his day mechanically; he walked into the campus through Gate no. 3 at before seven-thirty, trying not to gaze at carefree students lounging on the benches in the Green Zone, hanging out hours before their classes began, still enjoying the fall while it lasted. A couple holding hands were sitting near a small lake, some yards away from a much larger group with a guitarist in the centre. Guys ran about playfully teasing girls, while some of them were gathered around a guy working on a laptop, which turned out to be the gathering watching a YouTube video of a cat falling from a cupboard.

John wondered how the other professors went about without the nostalgia of their college lives tingling their memories and haunting them every second while they caught sight of the neo-adults sitting in their classes, listening to them and talking among themselves. Maybe that's why the other lecturers were so close-knitted in their cliques.

Or maybe no one really thought about it all like John did.

John hadn't memorised his schedule yet. He wasn't going to; if he ever mixed up, he really didn't fancy going through what had happened on previous Monday. It had been supremely embarrassing. He had never turned up in the wrong class during the eight years of university and the bomb dropped when he began as a proper faculty. Simply marvellous.

Still, he was okay with teaching undergraduates because they had an element of surprise and needed some work to be made into what he had become. He didn't know how he'd take it with the ones studying for masters or, God forbid, beyond that.

The first thing he learnt was that he'd have to start making papers for the sophomores and the seniors, who had their first internals test within a month, so that he could leave enough time for his personal academic work. John felt he had to speed up with teaching, cut it short and make a quick march, because once the dates for the freshers parties and the technical festivals came along, he'd be greeted with the sight of virtually empty desks in his class.

Not because they had to _prepare_ for _Technoholics_ , the technical fest—that was more like the division of the engineering faculty—but because they simply couldn't afford to pass up a single opportunity to skip classes without their attendance being hampered. Not that attendance counted, but still.

 _Technoholics_ was the annual technical carnival of St. Bart's, organised by the students of the Engineering and Technology Faculty of the university. John didn't remember any such thing being organised back when he was in college studying for his BSc, but then that was almost seven years ago. The world had gone over light years in only seven years.

Thankfully, he made his way to the cafeteria before official recess time, just so he could eat in peace. He wasn't a very good cook—he always mistook the salt for the powdered sugar in his hurry and all the eggs in the world were his sworn enemies—so he settled for cafeteria food, which was not as good as he had expected it to be, seeing that St. Bart's had very high standards and all that.

When he actually reached the cafeteria, he noticed that among the sparse throngs of students there was already a very lone group of teachers sitting together in a secluded corner and talking about. . . only God knew what. John had never been to these professor-gossipings before. Back when he was in college, he used to think that professors only talked about boring things such as the price of books, about their upcoming articles in prestigious journals and how their wives were. It had never really struck him that he might one day be thinking about something that was remotely different from all that.

He felt out of place. He was older than the students and younger than his colleagues. He quietly drew a chair a couple of tables away from them and ordered a chicken sandwich and his coffee without sugar while trying his best to keep his ears on their conversation.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a couple of girls watching him, trying their best to be discreet in their attention. John looked away, pretending not to notice them. He had come across many like them in his doctorate years.

Sipping the hot coffee and feeling the lethargy being swept away, he angled himself so that he could have little more bits from their conversation.

"Yeah, so I was telling Dr. Simpson. . . the boy's guardians should be contacted," a particularly loud one proclaimed, "He's so rash and so annoying, y'all won't believe it—"

The others murmured a general consent. They clearly "believed" it.

"Just because he somehow manages to be the top student, it doesn't mean that he should treat others as if they were the scum of his feet! I mean, look at the boy! Not even reached twenty, and Holmes' nose is high up in the air like Caesar!"

"Precisely. He finds it "boring". Even I've been to university, and I wasn't gutsy enough to tell _my_ professor right to his face that I found mathematics tedious and unimportant because I was doing my Majors in geology!"

"Exactly," the loud one continued, "If you don't like my class, simply don't attend it, seeing as you manage marks anyway."

John turned away so that he couldn't hear it all anymore, seeing that it was nothing but pure gossip about some arrogant little prick called Holmes.

"Stop talking about that little undeserving spoilsport," one of the youngest ones exclaimed, "Did you see Wilde on the talk show last night . . .?"

John turned towards them with interest again. Now their talk sounded something worthwhile.

"Oh yes, that young man has got it going," another older one grunted appreciatively, "I remember him pulling in twelve hours and completely ignoring teaching the past year. Mostly he used to send a graduate to take his classes. But the research is really influential, so it's worth it. Could turn worlds."

"I heard his work was generously funded, and that _Simpson himself recommended it_ to the BJS."

The other let out a gasp of shock mingled with admiration and perhaps envy too. John now knew that this Simpson must be some important figure.

"He had Simpson review his paper?"

"Heard so but it might be a rumour," the loud one backpedalled and John could tell that he was slightly jealous of his colleague's accomplishments, "I haven't seen Wilde in a while. He had been busy, working from seminar to seminar to get scholars interested."

"I saw him a week ago at a conference in King's. My, he should get some rest, poor man."

"No one would think of resting with such a goldmine, Dr. Cameron," the younger man, that John was starting to like with his easygoing manner and his non-dominating attitude—although that really wouldn't work in his favour during his career—unlike his peers, spoke, "Not you, not I."

"At any rate, I haven't seen of anybody all that much," another said, breaking the tension. "This is our first lunch together this year, isn't it?"

"With the exception of Wilde, Moody and Brook, Dr. Lombard," another said.

"Hmm," the younger one whose mouth was now full of mashed potato answered, "Moody left. He got an offer at Yale. Untenured."

"Yale?!" Some of them let out gasps of admiration that matched the ones for Dr. Wilde.

"Yes, the man's that mad. Going to the States! He's going to have to be teaching eight simultaneous classes in there at two colleges or something like that. Moving at all times and relentlessly keeping on outing quality and sensational, not to mention reviewed to the pain of death, research papers."

"I'd leave England for the States in a heartbeat," another quipped, "To my son. He says it's like that over there, like what you said, Dr. Abbott."

"Well, I've got my family here," the fellow called Abbot said as John struggled to remember all the names while trying not to appear as eavesdropping, "Can't leave."

"I got a divorce," said the loudmouth who John identified as Lombard, "Missus said she couldn't take my long hours."

And there we go, he thought. They were back to wife talk.

 

* * *

 

A week passed somehow since that professor malfunction incident with Dr. whatever-his-name-was (according to the ten-name rule, Sherlock wasn't going to commit any more than ten names to his well-stocked attic of his brain because his "hard drive" was too important for such things) and that apparently-teacher-who-was-a-postgraduate-taking-classes-for-Dr.-Brook who Molly was smitten with. Sherlock was starting to like his second year life much better than his freshman year, except for the fact that he was much well-known and that he had lost his beloved sense of anonymity.

At any rate, it _was_ infinitely better than the last year, where he used to be asked any simple question by his seniors and made fun of because of the answer. The sort where they asked you if you had a girlfriend—and then asked you to write down two A4 sheets in standard 11 font handwriting about why or why you did not have one as a sadistic form of entertainment.

A tedious recess later, they ended up in Anatomy next, with Molly dreading her grades and Sherlock dreading boredom. He had skipped Anatomy the last Monday, and Thursday had been a holiday for some reason only the university authorities knew about. Molly had told him that it was that Dr. whatever-his-name-was who was going to teach them. He was an awkward newbie fella. Sherlock simply pitied him.

It had only been a week since the term had begun, and he was already mind-numbingly, sickeningly bored. 

First of all, the professors who arrived were all stupid, almost as if they had received their degrees out of pity for their blatant idiocy. And they never even acknowledged his "helpful" comments about the 243 errors that he had found in his Physics reference. But no one ever dared to commit the mistake of giving him a private lecture about keeping his mouth shut.

Not that he was fond of such lectures. Most of the faculty had had a firsthand experience of making Sherlock Holmes wait after class and then having him launch into a monologue about their private matters.

Somehow, all the news always managed to reach a certain impeccably-dressed, pompous, arrogant fat dick sitting behind a desk every time. Not that he complained. Whenever he was forced to have a family dinner (if you could call it a family dinner at all with the amount of glaring and the niceties. . . well, in a sense it _was_ a family dinner after all) with his parents and Mycroft, they would never stop glaring.

And that feeling was simply wonderful.

All that Sherlock had received the whole day was resentment from his teachers and his peers for being an insufferable know-it-all, bullying from some seniors when they had tried to flirt with Molly and Sherlock had stood up for her, and an unfortunate incident with scalding hot coffee.

The only good thing through the entire day had been when he had climbed over the back wicket gate to the St. Bart's medical college and spent a small amount of time in the mortuary before he was asked for an ID. Sherlock didn't understand why St. Bart's insisted on separating their campuses at all when only a simple jump was all he needed to spend a couple of hours with corpses.

All in all, the day had sucked. And now, an annoying buzz was taking over Sherlock's mind, something which couldn't be eased by even the pathetic attempts that Molly made at jokes and her odyssey about her cat(s). He sighed to himself for the umpteenth time as she told her friends about one of those insufferable homeless kittens outside her flat who purred a lot when no one looked, and how one day someone kicked it and it stopped purring and died.

Another five minutes and Sherlock would start deconstructing and laying bare the scandalous history of the girl who was chattering away with Molly.

Dr. . . whatever-his-name-was was late, perhaps because the class was right after the lunch and because his digestion was more important than Sherlock getting murderous. For some reason, Molly was dead scared of him. Sherlock didn't understand why. He supposed that he would find out, after all he hadn't attended his class yet. But then, he suspected, it had something to do with Sherlock treating their professor disrespectfully when he had crashed with him and Dr. whatever-his-name-was conspiring to mark Sherlock (like many others probably) and Molly down and probably fail them and maybe ruin their careers and what not.

"Didn't you know, Sherlock," she whispered in a voice that ought to be reserved for Sunday sermon when she talked about Dr. Watson and abruptly switched to the apparently-teacher-who-was-a-postgraduate-taking-classes-for-Dr.-Brook . "He's a double PhD. Like Sheldon Cooper."

"Who's Sheldon Cooper?"

Despite Molly's fears and her nervous chatter with her girl friends who despised Sherlock and continuously asked her why she put up with him, Sherlock sincerely hoped that it was some old teacher who was completely fed up with him, or maybe that Dr. whatever-his-name-was was replaced by some old idiot. That Dr. . . whatever-his-name-was, was a newbie obviously. He looked too young to have the proper amount of experience dealing with rebellious uni students. Sherlock hated newbies. They acted as if the weight of the world rested upon their shoulders and that they had to completely commit themselves to the lost cause of teaching, and the shackles of the miserable system that was higher education.

Sherlock glanced at his watch, and at the boys fooling around with the classmates and texting away to their friends sitting two benches away. The class representative was trying to beat a Doodle Jump high score. Sherlock sighed. He wondered why he went to a university at all. And that too St. Bart's. He could've easily got into Oxford or something similar, not that he wanted to. . .

Dr. Watson, to Sherlock's utter dismay, arrived, this time in the right class of course, seeing as this was his classroom after all. Molly hid her face behind her textbook, and Sherlock's eyes were in the danger of rolling out of his head. He smiled politely at the students, starting with proper roll calls.

"Alright then. . ." his eyes roamed around the class, taking in each student and finally settled on the bored figure of Sherlock Holmes sitting in the last bench with his sidekick, that little girl hiding behind her notebook. He paused for some time, wondering if he would be able to get rid of that student, or rather, Sherlock thought that that was what was going inside Dr. Watson's mind. But the professor simply looked away with raised eyebrows as he delved into an undoubtedly practised speech about the subject. Sherlock sighed a long all-suffering sigh, burying his head into his palms as Molly became more attentive, relieved that Dr. Watson hadn't noticed her.

True enough, Dr. Watson was one of  _those_  newbies. A perfect and classical example of them. He was terribly dedicated and patient, and he went into the subject matter in depth right during the first week, when most teachers preferred not to take the class for the full duration at all.

Give me a break, Sherlock cried out inwardly. He wanted to go and staple his head to something. Anything at all.

Halfway during the class, when Dr. Watson had asked them a simple question regarding something to do with someone or something's muscles, and when no one managed to answer, not even Molly, who then realised that she had been far too busy with Greg over the summer, the professor's eyes settled on Sherlock, who was stretched out far too comfortably for a desk too small for him.

"What about you, last bench? Have something to contribute?"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed at 'last bench'. Just because the last bench had the good fortune to seat him, it didn't mean that it also got naming privileges. Molly risked a glance at the professor. His eyes weren't on her. Sherlock straightened up in his seat, pondering whether the question was going to be worth his time or not.

"Didn't get you there, professor," he muttered, just audible.

Dr. Watson crossed his arms over his chest, the edge of his mouth twitching and Sherlock found himself unconsciously watching it. He quickly gave himself a mental shake, wondering what other disastrous effects boredom could have on his mind.

"Perhaps you could march over to these empty rows in front," he pointed out, indicating at them. "Then maybe your hearing could benefit a little."

Sherlock waved a dismissive hand, yawning slightly for extra effect, "Nah, I'm okay here." Even Molly seemed okay with her current seat as she desperately tried to avoid Dr. Watson for some reason only God knew about. The rest of the students gave a few titters and died down.

Dr. Watson licked his lips and looked down at his shoes, choosing to cut him some slack because he was still new in St. Bart's, "I asked the class to point out the different kind of muscles of the back—superficial group—"

"Pfft!" Sherlock looked annoyed for having been roused out of his comfort zone for such a trivial question. This was so beneath him.

"Trapezius, latissimus dorsi. . . Look them up on page seventy three, table number twenty nine. You can't be asking me this," he replied, taking out all his frustration with boredom on the poor teacher. "It's from _previous_ year!"

Dr. Watson smiled humourlessly, throwing him a faux-amazed look, "Oh good, at least you knew the last year bit, Mr. . .?"

"Holmes," he replied as his eyes narrowed at his insinuation. How dare he? Sherlock saw through everything and everyone in seconds, mind it. He knew everything.

Well, mostly everything. He didn't know how to get rid of boredom, for starters.

"Well then, Mr. Holmes," Dr. Watson folded his arms behind his back and pursed his lips challengingly, and Sherlock began to wonder if Dr. Watson had already heard about his infamous reputation, "let's hear the part that is _not_ last year."

Every student looked blank. How could everyone be so blank? How? In utter disbelief, Sherlock turned to Molly, who only whispered to him, slightly embarrassed, "I know it's from last year, I just can't remember it!"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and stood up, slouching against the wall as he took in a breath deep enough to last him for the whole answer. The whole class turned to him, expecting the inevitable string of words from Sherlock's mouth in quick succession, going into explicit details of the superficial muscles of the back, the origin, insertion, actions, innervations, arteries, everything.

And that's what exactly happened.

Dr. Watson went from shock to disbelief to wonder and at last, to thoroughly amazed at this insincere-looking young man as Sherlock went on and on, not able to stop himself from showing off and supplying to the deficit of others' knowledge. His eyes grew wider and wider, and when Sherlock finally stopped, John didn't realise that he had mouthed a delighted "Brilliant!" to himself. Sherlock's lips quirked upwards at that in a quick twitch of a smirk. Molly, as always, hoped she could have answered that.

Dr. Watson cleared his throat, not sure whether to be delighted or be embarrassed, "Right, ahem. . . thank you, Mr. Holmes." He looked like he wanted to say something along the lines of 'shame on you others, learn something from "that last bencher"', but he simply let out an exhale, and carried on with his lecture, leaving Sherlock to be super bored. Again. He stretched his legs, scraping the desk noisily against the floor, cracking his knuckles and his elbows very audibly accompanied with a groan.

Dr. Watson turned at him, his mouth slightly ajar, peering at the student through his glasses with disbelief. In all the years of his life, he had never seen someone so impertinent and disrespectful. Sherlock saw that he had the professor's attention and spoke, "Can we move along to  _this_  year? We know this stuff!"

By 'we', Sherlock simply meant 'I'. Dr. Watson straightened up, adjusting his tie. "If you're finding this lecture repetitive, the door is that way."

 

Sherlock had nothing to say to that. He didn't want to be thrown out of class. So he decided to stare the man down until one of them yielded. But Dr. Watson wasn't like his colleagues. He sensed what Sherlock was trying to do and folded his arms, smirking. He seemed happy to be playing the staring game. Beside him, Molly looked simply miserable and buried herself deeper behind her textbook, probably reconsidering sitting with Sherlock during the classes.

John felt like he could burn the whole building down. His day had extremely bad till now. And this student was making it worse. But he didn't give up on staring Holmes down so easily. When he realised that more than a minute had passed and that the silence was growing thicker, he ground his teeth together, "Why don't you try studying instead if you won't leave?"

"I know it all," said he as if it were general knowledge, while Molly looked mildly horrified at Sherlock arguing with the poor new teacher with next-to-zero experience dealing with rebellious neo-adults. She tried to silence him by pinching his arm and kicking him under the desk lest he should embarrass himself, but Sherlock looked like he was determined to make this day the worst day of Dr. Watson's life.

"Great, but I'm sorry I can't help you there," the professor stretched his lips in a placating smile and returned back to the board, returning to his explanations. Sherlock tried not to frown at this man, this incredibly patient man. Any other person would have flipped out by now. He wanted to test him, see how much it took to break through this Professor Watson, but he resisted it. Dr. Watson continued writing on the board, making classification tables, and before Sherlock could say anything, Molly's aim under the table was quite successful as Sherlock succumbed to the momentary pain breaking out in his leg. Dr. Watson said nothing, he simply carried on despite Sherlock's many attempts to sabotage his lesson.

Sherlock stared at his battered notebook, at the various rogue reactions scattered about outside the margins and in contrast, the neat, spidery scrawl of the notes inside the margin. He looked at his half-chewed pen. And then he looked back at Dr. Watson. God, the man was patient.

Finally, the class was dismissed. Sherlock looked up his schedule. It was self study hour, a quick glance told him that. Molly gave him a weak smile and her lips curved downwards almost instantly as she explained how one of her friends with a name that half the girls you know have had just managed to pass the previous semester and that she needed her help. So, she walked away with that friend towards the library or whatever free place they got for themselves. Sherlock wanted to tell her sometimes that these girls were as fickle as the weather, stayed with her only because they could use her for completing their assignments in the guise of friendships. They weren't the friends she believed them to be, but she always walked away before he could say that. And she was too naive to see that.

Sherlock threw her retreating back an unnoticed sulk and remained seated in his place thinking about what to do. He could go out, find some empty classroom and then go to Room B14 for his organic chem lecture, which was on the same floor.

Or he could sit in some class for the seniors because there was much more challenging coursework there, but then the professor would recognize him and throw him out because they didn't want an "unwanted hindrance" to their teaching in their class.

Somehow, within the span of only one year, Sherlock Holmes had become a notorious name not just among the University Sciences centre of St. Bart's, but throughout the whole university; rude, unlikable, narcissistic, an undeserving little snot, frighteningly intelligent etc, etc. Molly often tried to dodge the spotlight, but then it was useless to do so when she practically spent most of her day with Sherlock.

Why go somewhere else if this room was empty after all? Because Room B14 was two doors away. Why even bother? Moreover, this professor still didn't know him properly. He could take advantage of his tolerance till he also turned him out, which was quite far away in future.

He approached Dr. Watson, who already had a couple of other students asking him certain doubts in his lecture, "Hey, erm. . . professor," he began awkwardly.

After Dr. Watson was finished with those two, he greeted a curt, "Mr. Holmes," without even turning to acknowledge his presence while he rearranged his papers, as if a little annoyed at him for approaching him sheepishly with doubts after having attempted to sabotage his lecture. He kept a neat desk, Sherlock observed, but by force of habit, not by choice. Even his tie remained in his place like the hangman's noose, owing to the unconscious tugs to set it straight.

"Is this. . . erm, classroom going to be free for the next hour?"

"Er. . ." he checked his schedule, while contemplating about how nicely Sherlock had talked to him, "Yeah it is."

John cursed his autopilot when he blurted that out. Before he could modify his response, Sherlock shrugged his shoulders and settled down on one of the front benches, taking out _100 Most Scandalous Judgements Passed By the Supreme Court_ and burying himself deep within it. John stared at the kid for several moments, thinking about what to say. He wanted to ask him why he was here because John clearly had been expecting a room free from any disturbances. Seeing that Sherlock was quiet for the first time, he nodded to himself and strode over to him.

"Show me your schedule."

Sherlock extracted himself from the very interesting book and threw him a glare with all his late teenage rebelliousness and temper in all its glory, but Dr. Watson did not back away.

"Why?"

"I need to know if you're bunking any of your classes."

Sherlock tried not to smile mischievously at the professor. He really was a poor newbie. He couldn't stop himself from laughing silently as he dug into his backpack and passed him two exactly identical schedules with some changes in the classes.

John looked from one to another in confusion, "What's this?"

"Two schedules, one of which is the actual one, and the other is something I use to fool teachers like yourself, for the very improbable occasions where they catch me bunking classes," said he without lifting his head from his book, "Best of luck, professor."

"Far-sighted one, aren't you, Mr. Holmes?" The teacher smirked at Sherlock, who retreated back to his book as John cast his eyes over the two timetables. He smiled to himself victoriously as if he had found the difference and handed one of them back to Sherlock after a few moments, "Well then, here you go, Mr. Holmes. I'll keep the fake one as a souvenir."

Sherlock's eyes widened with surprise at that. It was indeed his real schedule. No one else had ever figured it out, not even Molly. "How did you get it?"

Dr. Watson didn't bask in his praise for long as he pointed at the morning timeslot, "You have Organic Chemistry theory this afternoon, I remember you from last Monday."

He pointed at the 4:30- 5:30 time slot in the copy in his hand, which read 'Mathematics.

"Can't ever forget that Organic chemistry class, can you professor?" Sherlock smirked back at him, while trying not to come across as interested in the man's above average intellect and memory. He made a mental note to further improve upon his fake schedule, now that someone had cracked it.

Dr. Watson tried not to grow red at the memory as he settled into his chair. They sat in silence for the next forty five minutes as Sherlock remained buried in his books and John in his papers and notes. Almost once in every minute, Sherlock's eyes drifted to the oblivious man sitting on the not-so-comfy-looking chair as he ran his fingers through his ash blond hair, immersed in his books, preparing for the next lesson intently and sometimes drawing out his phone to type out an occasional text. Sherlock wanted to laugh at his sincere efforts. There weren't many serious students in St. Bart's.

This man was different from the strict teacher that he appeared as to others. Because that sort of teacher wouldn't have even tolerated Sherlock at the point when he said that he had two schedules to fool others, let alone solving the problem. And this man had looked _delighted_ at the idea, if the shine in the eyes had been anything to go by. That was something new. Maybe because he was still under-experienced. But then, how under-experienced could one really be?

Dr. Watson was someone Sherlock was willing to allowing a second glance.

When Sherlock thought that he would be more comfortable wandering the university, finding new capillaries to the network of routes and turns of the university building, than in the well-ventilated room, he slipped out of there, wondering how many pages he had actually read.

Turned out, quite a few many. Although the book wasn't that interesting.

He could feel Dr. Watson's eyes drilling into his back as he walked out. Well, he _was_ a celebrity, in a manner of speaking, wasn't he?

He walked out of the building and sighed, and the dull grey sky stared back at him. There was absolutely nothing to do. He felt as useless as a used napkin. Even the morgue didn't hold any attraction to him.

The dreaded boredom had sunk in again.

 

* * *

 

All in all, if someone asked John to rate his entire first week, it would be a four out of ten, which was actually better than what he has expected. He had thought that teaching was going to suck, like it had sucked back when he had to pull double work as an instructor and with his theses, but then it was okay, if one did not review the days as cynically as John had reviewed it.

Being a likeable person, John got himself a friend from during the time he had spent near the main administrative office, a chubby fellow called Donald Abbott, from PG sciences ("call me Donnie, not Don or Donald," he had insisted). He loved like-minded adults, and therefore, he and Donnie mutually bonded over their hatred towards the freshers—who thought that they had conquered the world by managing to reach university—very quickly. They walked to the bus stop together, chatting a little about their respective first weeks. John marvelled at the pressure that Donnie talked about. He had no idea how he was going to take it after a couple of months. Whether he _was_ going to be able to take it after two months, the business of teaching, the routine. . .

"You won't believe it," said John, scratching the back of his neck with his nails, thinking about how stupid it had really been. "I ended up in the wrong class on the first day, and then mistook one of the other professors for a student. Just today, I ended up pissing off two others, along with Simpson. It just—practically sucked."

Donnie patted his shoulder sympathetically, "Happens to everyone, John. You can't be a functioning faculty here without offending Simpson at least once, in which case. . . welcome to St. Bart's."

Dr. Peter J. Simpson was the HoD of the faculty of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, the sort of teacher who could bet wagers with students over the life and future of another student. Like if there was a conscientious student who might be the class topper and if he bet Simpson that his friend—who might be consistently at the bottom of the rank list—would manage a job in the campus interviews, Simpson would be the one to ensure that that student didn't manage to get a job at all, ever, just to prove himself right.

John smiled weakly, and Donnie awarded him with a smirk, "At least it was your first week, students don't know you yet—"

John shook his head, "Right. All that right on the first day of my teaching career, Donnie! Christ, they were laughing at me like madmen and I felt so stupid! I still remember what I did when my teachers did something stupid, and these kids . . .well, you know."

Donnie gave him a reassuring smile, "I'm telling you, John. Shit happens to everyone. You're still young. You won't believe half the embarrassing things that have happened to me!"

"Oh, yeah?" John crossed his arms over his chest, his face interrogative. "Nothing worse than mine, I bet?"

Donnie looked like a cat caught with a pet bird in his mouth. "Look, I'm not exactly comfortable with sharing all of it, okay? . . . Let's just say that there was a video and Facebook involved. God, I hate that Zuckerberg guy!"

John smirked, "Don't worry, Donnie. Shit happens to everybody."

Suddenly, he remembered a tall lanky bored teen in navy blue jumper. "And there was this strange fellow in my class—"

Donnie's eyes lit up with amusement, "Holmes?"

John nodded, wondering if he was some sort of a celebrity. Well, he might as well be. Such a. . . fellow was hard to miss. Even the professors were talking about him and it was only the first week, "Yeah, how did you—?"

Before he could finish, Donnie gave him what seemed like a congratulatory pat on his back and an amused chuckle, but his eyes were completely sympathetic, "When you say strange, he is the first one that comes to my mind. In fact to everyone's mind. It was him that Lombard and Greer were complaining about in the canteen."

"Who?"

"Oh. . ." Donnie realised that John had probably not attended their heated discussion about how Holmes had begun to terrorise every professor once again, "just. . . we were discussing in the cafe during the recess, never mind. . ."

"Oh right," John remembered eavesdropping on them. Well, not exactly _eavesdropping._ They had been very loud in the first place.

"God, I hate that guy. . . Well," Donnie faltered, "I don't _hate_ him, I just. . . it's always difficult having a guy like that in your class, y'know. After all, you're just trying to do your job properly."

John nodded weakly.

"Well, you better know about Sherlock Holmes and keep one or two comebacks prepared, just in case," Donnie began with a good-natured laugh.

John soon found out that Sherlock Holmes was the consistent topper of his batch, a genius, and now it served to make him feel even more embarrassed at not having treated a genius like him as one. Up till now, he had thought that the answer to that question had been a fluke, that Holmes, by sheer chance of luck (even though what had come from him had seemed simply brilliant at that moment) had known the answer to that one question only, and that if he had asked him about something else, maybe he wouldn't have been able to answer.

"But let me warn you about something," said he, "Never ever ask him to meet you after the class, no matter what he says or what he does, alright?"

John nodded, keeping it in his mind, wondering why was that so. Holmes had stayed behind that day, and he had been so much more tolerable than in class. Much more tolerable than what the other teachers had been saying about him.

"He does this thing, this trick," Donnie continued, "Where he can tell you everything about you just by a single glance, you know. Like he's got your CV and Facebook profile right in his head, all memorised up, and then if you listen to what all things he tells  _you_  about  _yourself_ when you make him stay after class, you wish you had never even met him."

John's ears pricked up at that.  _That_ was something he would definitely pay to see. While he slowly drifted off to other topics with Donnie, he couldn't really erase that out-of-the-ordinary teenager out of his thoughts. John tried to concentrate on Donnie, his funny, extremely entertaining stories, but he felt like something had changed, irreversibly so. The dullness he felt before, the boredom, had gone. As if it had been replaced by a funny sort of restlessness, an itch at the back of his brain or maybe in the tips of his fingers. Like he was waiting for something. Or like he was missing out on something, right that minute.

Nevertheless, Donnie bade him goodbye as his bus arrived, and John waited for his to lead him back to his little flat.

 

* * *

 

Jeanette greeted John with a brief peck on his cheek as he entered his flat, "So, one week as a professor. How does that feel?" She smirked lecherously.

John tried his best not to frown and push her away. Jeanette was extremely cheerful today, and she was acting as if she hadn't broken up with him a month ago, "What are you doing here?" His voice was a little too bitter than he wanted it to sound like.

She settled down on his armchair daintily, leaning forward so that her cleavage was a little visible. John turned away, watching the street out of his window as he put down his bag and reached out for his glasses to read the bills and the letters lying on the table, sitting down on the chair opposite to her.

"Let's have dinner tonight," she spoke, reaching out for his hand, and taking away the papers from his grip. John withdrew his hand, fighting for the last scraps of his dignity. Her soft hand did feel so good against his rough ones.

"Paul left you, didn't he?" he asked through gritted teeth. She smiled, the smile that John was never able to resist, the smile that always made him to want to wipe away, preferably with a long kiss.

"Forget about Paul,  _I miss you_. . . And has anyone told you how good you look in these cute geeky glasses?"

Jeanette stood up and strode over to John, the weight of 130 pounds crushing his thighs as she settled on them unceremoniously, leaning over to join her lips with those of John's. He returned her kiss only briefly before it could grow more heated.

"Eight o'clock," said she breathlessly as they broke away, "I'll wait for you."

John looked away, his rational mind wanting to say no, but the part which was still attached to Jeanette was screaming yes, yes, _fucking yes_. In this battle between self-respect and the longing for her companionship, the latter won as John leaned forward and planted a small kiss on her lips, "Okay."

At any rate, her dinner invitation wasn't crafted as an _invitation._

Jeanette smiled against his lips as she smoothed his hair, "See you then, love."

With that, she rose and walked away gracefully, leaving behind a troubled John wondering why he gave in to her again and again.

 

* * *

 

Back in the car as Sherlock drove Molly to her flat, Greg was there again, and although they weren't touching all that much, their conversation was still appalling. . . something about auto shop and leaving probably. Sherlock could stand Molly alone, as a friend. And then, her boyfriend would come along and suddenly, Sherlock would feel the irresistible need to phase out, which was a tempting offer right now but hugely disastrous, seeing as he was the one who was driving.

Molly completely changed when she was with Greg, she became "girly", opting for skirts instead of jeans, with that horrible red lipstick and eyeliner. She became much more nicer and sweeter (as if she wasn't already) and talked about things that were beyond his comprehension, and the thought that such things even existed annoyed him a lot. Instead of tying her hair in a neat ponytail, she chose to leave it free, often covering her head with a knitted beanie. It did make her look cute, but it irritated Sherlock that he wasn't entitled to such niceties, even though HE was supposed to be her best friend.

Sherlock knew he was being unreasonable, but how much could a man take?

He had brought this upon himself. He should have taken the backseat that day, he should never have opted to drive during that cursed morning, and now they were treating him as their personal chauffeur.

He felt more than grateful when he saw Baker Street approaching. Without a goodbye, he closed the front door loudly and retreated to his rooms, leaving Molly to take care of the rest of the driving.

He settled in his armchair with the laptop on his thighs, thinking about what to type in the search box. He drew out the business card and stared at it for several moments, thinking about what else he would find about him on the internet other than the fact that he used to play rugby in his teenage years or that he had an alcoholic brother, married, and who most certainly hated him. Finally he decided to get on with it, and typed into the dialog box "John Watson". He couldn't have had a more commonplace name.

Sherlock finally stumbled upon the man in pursuit, an Academia and a ResearchGate profile and came across some of his published research papers at King's from his PhD years, and some accolades from his university years. A typical boring professor. No Facebook profile, that was okay. . . no LinkedIn, _that_ was odd. You could find most professionals on LinkedIn, and this guy hadn't bothered to create a profile whereas he had clearly he must be a blustery do-gooder who was way too sincere than it was required of him.

All in all, he found nothing more than what he already had deduced from the state of Dr. Watson's clothes.

But when he recalled Dr. Watson cracking the problem of his fake schedule, his eyes lighting up at the idea, when he recalled the man he saw behind those glasses, he reconsidered the tag and description that he gave him. He drew his timetable out. He had anatomy on Mondays and Thursdays.

Dr. Watson. John Watson.

Sherlock wondered whether he was making an exception to his ten-name rule.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BJS-British Journal of Science


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock took his words back. However (mildly) intelligent Dr. Watson might be, the lecture - and he - were dreary as hell.

Thursday had just begun to become a favourite day for the duration of the term. Sherlock had inorganic chemistry for two hours and then back to back two hours free, recess followed by theory and then lab class for anatomy in the Dental Sciences Building, and mathematics back in the main UG science building. But today, the lab class was cancelled and Dr. Watson made it a theory class as well, meaning two hours of anatomy theory that elicited many silent groans from the rest of the students, Sherlock included. He always valued the practical experience more than the theory. They taught him things that were beyond textbook, things that you could only learn by doing.

Hence, this Thursday wasn't as good as it promised to be.

Only the first twenty minutes had been a little apart from the general description of boring because they had had a quick test to evaluate how sincere they had been during the holidays before the beginning of the term. After all, they had their first internals in a month, at least before the official freshers party, _U-Turn_ , so that all of them could prepare for the event. St. B's had been running on the same rails for the last two decades; examinations and fests snugly fitted and packed together, only disrupted by Pride marches, protest gatherings and other kinds of activism, so there was no need of actual date sheets, so to speak.

As for Sherlock, he found the surprise test alright except for the last two questions that surprisingly took more time than he had expected them to. Almost as if Dr. Watson had set those two questions specifically for him. Beside him, Molly looked perfectly comfortable with the questions save the last two. Sherlock finished his paper in fifteen minutes, and then debated whether to go to the professor's desk and submit the paper, or keep the paper with himself and stare at the next less-boring thing; imagining a beetle hovering over Dr. Watson's head.

One of his options involved getting up from his place, and the other involved getting bored, none of which were acceptable to him. So he simply drew his phone out and started reading a web article he had saved in Pocket beforehand. Molly stole a glance at what he was doing and returned back to her test. She had no time to be scandalised at Sherlock's antics. Not that using cell phones during tests classified as an antic at all. . .

And Dr. Watson, ever the sincere teacher had confiscated it as soon as he had spotted him reading under the desk with a claim of "cheating" until he saw him reading about the new Google Glass face-and-emotions-recognition app and raised his eyebrows at him pointedly. Sherlock simply exhaled and made no attempt to claim his phone back, because he knew that it was useless to do so. Not that he felt annoyed. He'd have to wait five minutes after the class to get his phone back, won't he?

"Yes, yes, alright," Dr. Watson called out when some students kept writing even after the time was over, "I know you all want to desperately please me with your marks, but there's no point in sneaking answers from your neighbours' paper when this test is not going to add to your GPA."

Titters all around as the whirring of pens ceased a little when the teacher banged the desk, "C'mon then, set it here. I have a bulk of material for today and there's less than an hour left!"

And now, fifteen minutes later, Sherlock was fed up with it. He was almost regretting not thinking through his plan properly. Molly could do little to help him. After all, she had to listen to what the professor was teaching instead of acting as Sherlock's handler all the time.

"So. . . any questions?" Dr. Watson asked. Sherlock raised a lanky arm in the air. The teacher looked a little surprised for a moment, because whenever Sherlock had to speak anything, he'd usually start speaking in the middle of the class without any regard for what John had been saying. So, John silently prepared himself for anything that Sherlock was going to throw at him.

"Yes, Mr. Holmes?"

"Ah, yes," Sherlock straightened up in his chair, folding his arms over his chest triumphantly, as if preparing in his mind how to best deconstruct Dr. Watson. "Erm. . . how long are we going to have to listen to this nonsense?"

A few titters from some of the students who were lame enough not to keep their chuckles suppressed at the practically nonexistent humour and a kick under the table from Molly were all he got as a rebuke, which he avoided very easily. Her blows had become very predictable lately.

Dr. Watson sighed resignedly and turned towards the board, rubbing it clean, "I think you do have a watch, Mr. Holmes," he turned to glare at him from over the tops of his glasses, and pointed at the device on his wrist. "That is, unless you're too dyslexic to be able to read the time."

The class, including Molly, stifled their laughter behind the knuckles of their palms but Sherlock could hear it in his ears as clear as a fire alarm. A few professors didn't bother to reply to Sherlock's contemptuous comments whereas most others never managed to come up with a proper response. Sherlock simply quirked his eyebrow a little, preparing a cutting retort as he sucked in a breath.

"My watch is digital, Dr. Watson," Sherlock hit back in a valiant attempt to save his pride.

Dr. Watson heaved a sigh resignedly, as if he knew that his class could simply not be salvaged anymore, "So?"

"It's an analog watch that dyslexics have a hard time with. Plus dyslexics have difficulty telling time at a very early stage of their life, mostly when they are 7 to 9 year olds. And I'm too young to have Alzheimer's or any other kind of dementia, which is also characterized with memory loss along with learning disabilities. Didn't they teach you this in masters?"

Students looked at Dr. Watson hopefully for the return blow as he chewed the insides of his cheek, his hands behind his back as he decided that it wasn't worth his time and effort to answer Sherlock. The left corner of his mouth jumped before he simply sighed and went back to the assignment he was talking about, to everyone's dismay. Sherlock leaned back in his chair victoriously, while Molly looked shocked and amused in equal amounts.

After precisely an infinite amount of time for Sherlock, students rushed out into the corridors as the class was dismissed, and Sherlock went over to Dr. Watson's desk to collect his phone back as Molly waited for him outside the class.

"Here's the phone," he tossed it to him as Sherlock approached him, who caught it neatly out of reflex. "I might have fiddled with something or the other, as payback. You should check."

Sherlock smirked at that, but his amusement soon turned to horror, "You uninstalled my Facebook and Twitter, sir?!"

"Do try and concentrate in my class, Mr. Holmes," Dr. Watson chimed, the faintest trace of amusement in his voice, "It'll certainly do you no harm."

"I don't remember the passwords!"

"And it shall be my joy to watch your bored arse debate whether or not to recover your password from your email," Dr. Watson smirked at him, a particularly vicious kind of smirk, but even though Sherlock was really irritated, he found that he really didn't mind. Instead of leaving the lecture room with a sulk as Dr. Watson had hopefully expected him to, Sherlock sat down on one of the desks, watching him who had just begun to sip his coffee as an alternative to doing anything else than just,  _just_ hold a conversation with Sherlock.

"My boredom seems like a joke to you, professor?"

"Well, if my job is a joke to you, I don't see why your boredom isn't going to be the same to me," Dr. Watson raised an eyebrow and looked at him from over his specs, expression commiserating, "Look, please understand. It's not easy for me, this work. It's, frankly, bloody stressful. If it's attendance you're worried about, I'm sure I can," he cast a wary look around, as if searching for nonexistent listeners and then leaned in towards Sherlock, prompting, "we can. . . work something out."

Sherlock sighed, "How would you feel if I taught you the table of 2 the whole day, professor?"

Dr. Watson cleared his throat as he took his glasses off in front of Sherlock for the first time. His breath caught very briefly as he saw the deep blue in them. Sherlock frowned internally, wondering where the hell that was coming from. He tried not to narrow his eyes as Dr. Watson's smirk spread very momentarily across his face before it became something resembling exasperated and the navy blue became shallower.

"Not very excited, I should imagine."

Sherlock blinked the unsaid feeling out of his eyes and narrowed them. "Well, then your imagination is very poor,  _professor_!" He declared, looking up at him. " _Not very excited_  is the understatement of the century."

Dr. Watson put down his coffee on his desk and sniggered, this time a little amused, " _Understatement of the century_? You do love to be dramatic, don't you Mr. Holmes?"

"Sherlock, please," he said, before he could stop himself.

"Well then. . . Sherlock," said he, as he ran his fingers through his hair, "You should. . . erm, go now, I suppose. My next class arrives in five minutes and besides, even if it will make my life easy, I really don't want you skipping classes."

Dr. Watson craned his neck to look past him at Molly waiting outside the class. Sherlock turned in the direction of Dr. Watson's gaze just as Molly noticed both the men looking at her. She turned away at once, and Sherlock gave him an acknowledging 'hmm' before exiting the lecture room, his thoughts drifting to those blue eyes on their own accord.

"It took time," she spoke softly, "did he tell you off too much?"

Sherlock merely shook his head as he parted ways with her. What was that? A couple of eyes, yes. He had seen eyes before. Stern ones, closed ones, overjoyed ones, dilated ones, pinpoint ones, all sorts. Blue, grey, green, brown. . . even red in some vampire or werewolf movie that Molly had forced him to watch with that boyfriend of hers. . . Greg, right. The only boyfriend who was tolerant of Sherlock.

He had seen eyes before.

Sherlock went for Mathematics, a subject he didn't understand why people still studied given that some blessed man had invented the calculator. Molly left for the Chemistry lab III and Sherlock wished he could've got in with her, but the teacher knew him way too well, and he really didn't fancy another row with a lesser mortal.

During the lecture, he didn't utter a single word, his thoughts going back to the young professor occasionally. Many a times, the Mathematics professor's eyes kept travelling to him, wondering whether Holmes was storekeeping all the insults for the end of the class. But Holmes wasn't paying any attention, and that was the best thing that could happen to any professor.

The ruddy-faced mathematics professor locked eyes with him. Sherlock could see he knew that he hadn't written anything at all.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes as he spotted a difficult looking integral and he set down to work it out, to revel in the sense of the momentary distraction. A second later, the answer flashed before his eyes and as he struggled to write it down, the restless feeling began to sink in.

He sighed and packed his things, dumping them into his bookbag: a couple of textbooks, a folder, a notebook and his half-chewed pen and extracted himself from the last benches to walk away out of the door.

"Ah, there's our first quitter," the mathematics coach simpered as people shared a snigger behind Sherlock's back, "Don't worry, Mr. Holmes. Better men that you have failed this class."

Sherlock slung the bookbag over his  shoulder and paused at the door, still not looking back.

"The answer is negative one!" He called loudly for everyone to hear and closed the door behind him with a thud.

"Erm. . . that's correct, Mr. Holmes. . ." he gritted his teeth begrudgingly as he watched the lanky kid rushing his way out without any regard for the professor, "so, anybody who knows how he worked that out?"

 

* * *

 

That night, Sherlock tried to sleep, knowing that he might doze off in the English course that he had been forced to take even as the other guys in the class would keep staring openly at the pretty teacher. He could always sleep or not-sleep when he ordered his body to. He could command his body into doing whatever he wanted.

He found he couldn't.

 

* * *

 

It was only after everyone had left the Monday class that Sherlock had carried himself up to Dr. Watson meekly. Dr. Watson gave him a stiff nod of acknowledgement and he settled into one of the front benches. This was starting to become a promising schedule for every Monday, even if this was only their second trial run. The room would be absolutely quiet, so much that they were both aware of the gentle humming noise that the compressor of the air-conditioner made.

Sherlock always stayed back after class for an hour after Anatomy theory, sit down and do whatever he did as long as he pleased and as long as he was quiet, and then, five minutes before the hour lapsed into completion, he would go away.

He watched the professor's eyes track his phone as he settled wherever the air-conditioning was the best in the room. Five minutes of pin-drop silence followed. 

Somehow, with the queer sense of awareness that came with being seated with only one other person in a huge, empty room, they both always tried their best to do their work without giving in to the tension. It was always awkward sitting with a person you knew next to nothing about in a room and trying and concentrate on your own work, more so for a student and teacher sitting together, which was always contrary given that a student always had a tendency to run away from his teacher and spare himself the awkwardness.

It wasn't much of a problem for Sherlock; he had a fairly interesting book in front of him and his phone was a good distraction. But Dr. Watson was a little less than distracted, mainly because he had texts coming over that he didn't ignore; instead he always looked grave when he read them. He typed a reply occasionally, and Sherlock's eyes flickered to him every time he did. And every time he finished with replying, Sherlock would turn his eyes away because he knew that Dr. Watson glanced at him before returning back to his work. Sherlock set it down to latent interest or something that had to do with the text itself. Both were equally unlikely.

Unless, there was something secret in that text that Dr. Watson wouldn't want any of his student to know about, and a glance across at Sherlock was only because he contemplated what would happen if his student came to know about his aforementioned secret.

Sherlock heaved a sigh, burying himself further in Pocket. He had too few data to work out what it was.

A janitor sort of guy came in and took Dr. Watson's signatures on some papers that Sherlock tried to read from the distance, maybe a notice for the faculty or something, he reasoned. As the man exited and Sherlock could sense Dr. Watson watching his retreating back, he suddenly uttered, like Archimedes had uttered _Eureka!_ all those years ago, "Sherlock."

Sherlock looked up at once, the previous restlessness in him taking a rather alarming magnitude, "Yes?"

"Nothing. I was just. . ." he made a hand-motion that Sherlock did not follow, "trying your name on my tongue."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at that at which Dr. Watson changed his response, ". . . I'm actually correcting your mock test now, would you maybe. . . like to see?"

"Oh," Sherlock leaned back against the back of his chair disinterestedly. "Is that so?" Dr. Watson wasn't as perceptive as he thought him to be. Maybe he had overestimated him.

"Yeah, you can come see, if you want. It always helps, seeing where you've gone wrong and all."

Sherlock resisted a "you think?" and strode over to him with a "sure". He dragged up a chair to his desk and plopped down on it, staring at his paper in which he had attempted and correctly answered every single question. How many times did he have to prove to him that he was generally almost never wrong?

"Holmes. **W**?" Dr. Watson pointed to the topmost right corner of the worksheet. Sherlock shook his head.

"Never mind," he exhaled impatiently, "that's unimportant."

Dr. Watson nodded and browsed through his paper with pen and eyes. He read through his paper and Sherlock simply leaned back in his chair, watching the various expressions flit by on Dr. Watson's open face. He smirked knowingly, triumphantly. He remembered each answer that he had written.

He could see Dr. Watson shake his head, almost smiling to himself, as if delighted at the paper, or maybe with Sherlock. The delight slowly turned to embarrassment, as Dr. Watson put Sherlock's paper aside on a pile of already checked papers with a sophisticated cough and arranged them even though they were already arranged. Sherlock couldn't hide his smirk anymore.

"Oh, what happened to _help and all_?" He teased. Beside him, Dr. Watson looked like he was biting the inside of his cheeks.

"To err is human," he replied, trying to look unaffected as Sherlock took his paper from his desk and went back to his bench.

"Are you trying to imply that I'm not "human"?" He asked wryly.

Dr. Watson looked like he wanted to say something to that, but then he thought that he'd rather not, not when Sherlock seemed like he could dissect his words, pick them apart and twist them into what he might not want to say but was nonetheless true.

"Touché. Anyway, if there's anything you _do_ need to. . ." and a clear of throat here again as he tried to look busy and ruffled through another set of papers, "learn, it's how to be neat in your paper. Presentation, y'know. Makes a good impression on your professors. . . Might help if you go in for something like doctorate," he added in an undertone, as if almost hesitant at suggesting him that. The tone of his voice didn't miss Sherlock's attention at all.

Sherlock crossed his arms and stretched his legs to the fullest, leaning back in his chair, "And you can. . ." he paused till he had John's full attention, which was ensured as John looked up from his papers and took his glasses off, ". . . teach me that?"

"Ah, no. I'm paid to teach you guys anatomy, aren't I?"

Sherlock decided to cut him some slack, "And you're going extremely slow, even if it's only been two weeks. They usually tend to chip away the summer term."

"I think I'm the professor here. . ." Dr. Watson overrode him and Sherlock looked at him challengingly, at which he took a deep breath and continued in a much gentler and lower voice, "Look, if you don't like my class, you can always—"

"Yes." Sherlock buried his chin into his chest to pretend to type out a text to someone. . . Molly.

Dr. Watson cocked an eyebrow, "You can always—"

"Yes."

He looked up to see Dr. Watson pursing his lips and before he was ready, the man spoke fast, so that Sherlock didn't get any chance to interrupt him, "You can always skip my classes, Mr. Holmes. . ." He bent his head down to correct himself and then looked at Sherlock from under lowered lashes. Sherlock wanted to scoff. The need for acceptance for this man even from a student was almost laughable.

"Sherlock. . . Christ, old habits die hard."

"It's not an old habit," Sherlock pointed out before he could stop himself. "You hardly know me. Not even two weeks."

An awkward beat followed as Dr. Watson watched him for two seconds, after which he licked his lips and wore his glasses back like he was going back to what it was before, what _he_ was before, what he used to be when he taught. Sherlock could see it, read it real easy. The man behind the glasses—John, because Sherlock now remembered his name—was far apart than the person he knew as Dr. Watson.

"Alright. Yeah, that's right, "awkward clear of throat as he picked up the next paper, "Hooper M. . . Fine, good."

Sherlock suspiciously narrowed his eyes at the professor, a subtle wrinkle above his eyes as he dug back into whatever he had been iterating in his mind. It struck him, a minute later, that he _might_ have made Dr. Watson uncomfortable and that he shouldn't have said that, even though it was the objective truth.

Nevertheless, he felt like saying something might do some irreparable damage to something that he wasn't sure of, and with a final look at the professor, he kept flitting through Flipboard pages in his phone. Although he wanted to say something, and couldn't figure out why he wanted to say anything to ease someone else's tension, he kept quiet through the rest of the hour, ignoring the restlessness in himself.

 

* * *

 

John stared at the Holmes kid as he walked away, and sunk his head low in his papers. Great.

Abbott had told him, _told_ him not to make Holmes stay after class, but then Holmes was always so quiet and. . . alright that John had consented to let him. And he wasn't making him stay after class, was he? He was simply letting him. It had become an unspoken agreement between them since the second day. After all, it couldn't hurt, could it, to let a kid stay back when he wanted to? That way, he might also make an effort to be well-mannered in John's class and let his class go on smoothly.

And now, he had made a big fool of himself in front of the kid who could throw insults around for free. He knew, just knew what Holmes was going to do on Thursday. Make an even bigger fool out of him in class.

Maybe he was just being paranoid. After all, Holmes' cause of insults were academic in nature; he only objected to the pace at which John went. John didn't understand. No one else had a problem with it. They seemed to be comfortable, and it was close to the desired speed as per the curriculum provided to him. But then, Holmes was in all ways above them all. Maybe it seemed slow to him.

Well, it wasn't John's fault that Holmes was so clever. John had taken care that the surprise test was difficult enough for almost no one to be able to finish it, let alone score a full thirty. John wouldn't mind at all if Holmes sat outside and didn't attend his lectures at all. It would be easier for him to do his job.

John shook his head inwardly to clear his thoughts. He really shouldn't be the one to inspire a student to skive off his classes.

He glanced down at his phone, at the stale texts from Clara. Harry was starting to go downhill again. He shivered to think what would happen if any of his students came to know about his dysfunctional family. What impression they would form of him. His students already liked him, or at least it seemed like it, because compared to what Abbott said, he did not face as much as problems and hindrances with students as Abbott did. Well, one or two in each class was okay.

Worse, what impression Holmes would form of him and the sort of cutting remarks he would aim at his family if he was at the worst of his moods. Then, everybody would come to know and no one will look at him the same way again.

Another text arrived. It was from Jeanette. He didn't know whether he groaned or whether he wanted to smile.

**_9 o'clock today. Dinner reservation._ **

That did lift his mood up. He wanted to call, listen to her voice, but then the next class was going to arrive any time. He took out the attendance sheets from the file. He was grateful that he had this classroom to himself most of the time. He really wasn't fond of going all the way to his office in PG Science block and then coming back to square one.

One by one, students filled into the classroom. It was some senior class of those medicine students, he knew. He made himself comfortable in his chair, but narrowed his eyes when he saw a sight too well known. Dark-auburn haired, lanky and generally bored-looking kid sitting in the same bench, last bench. Well, not kid. He must be an adult if he was a sophomore.

John narrowed his eyes at that, as did the rest of the class, but did not frown openly like they did. He looked back at his schedule. He was in right class, thank God. But then, what was Holmes doing here? Again?

He removed the attendance sheet from his folder and passed it along. As John delved into a complicated lecture about the carotid triangle, he couldn't help but glance at the last bench. Holmes looked less bored than before. He even consented to focus his eyes on John, head tilted to his right, perhaps finally making an attempt to listen to what John had to say. John didn't understand him. One moment, he was asking him to call him Sherlock, and the other moment, he was practically sulking for calling him by his name.

When the attendance sheet reached him, he seemed to be writing something down in it. John paused in his lecture for a second to ponder what, because Holmes wasn't a part of the class. He wondered if he should quietly go to the boy and ask him to leave, seeing as he was missing his organic chemistry class (Good Lord, had he memorised that already? Well he might as well have, that class had been the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him) and it was his duty as a teacher to ensure that or some crap.

That wouldn't be fair, John thought. The boy was actually interested in here than in his own year. And John felt a little bright for being able to make a brilliant boy like him interested in his lectures.

When the class, including Holmes, left, John finally ran his eyes through the attendance sheet. At the end, in a neat spidery scrawl—

**_A1-045 Sherlock Holmes. Present_ **

He wondered if that was allowed.

 

* * *

  

Sherlock walked out of the lecture hall. He really didn't know what had possessed him to spend another hour in Dr. Watson's class.

Although, this one with the medicine students had been arguably better than how he had expected organic chem to go had he attended it in the first place. He knew Mycroft would be there when he got home. Sherlock thought, with an inward smirk out of pure glee, of the shock that Mycroft would get when Sherlock would get his big brother to ring up the roll section to ask for whether his name and signature was there on the attendance sheet on which he had signed. The look of concealed disappointment on Mycroft's face would be completely worth the unpleasant visit.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and waited for Molly around the corner. Actually, no. He wasn't waiting for Molly around—

He slinked further into the corner as he watched Dr. Watson walk out of the class, looking presentable and neat and orderly as always. But the man paid too much damn attention on what everybody was going to think of him and his bloody tie, Sherlock mused, and without thinking he rushed forward before he caught himself.

Sherlock blinked. What the hell had he been going to do?

Dr. Watson's head unexpectedly turned towards him and Sherlock looked at him, wishing that he wasn't giving away what he had been about to do. Sherlock had hoped—against all limits of rational thinking—that at least he would acknowledge his presence just because he sat in his class even after it was over. Because people were supposed to acknowledge each other's presence when they knew each other. That was the social protocol. . . or something like that, wasn't it? Quite pointless but Sherlock could see the necessity; if people didn't do that, they might fade into oblivion from others' memories given how tiny their retaining capacities were.

But deep down inside, he knew that this was, of course, wishful and completely ridiculous thinking. He was way too bored this term to allow for such ludicrous ideas, he reasoned, otherwise he wouldn't think such thoughts.

Dr. Watson walked away without even a nod, and even though Sherlock could feel something different in him, he couldn't process whether the restlessness in him and come down and shot up. He too, turned around, and thought of walking away, out through the courtyard to the annexure building and out of UG Science building, pondering over his strange behaviour. He could only hope it wasn't what he had never expected.

"Sherlock!" came a voice from somewhere before he could actually walk out. He whipped around. Molly was looking excited. Sherlock sighed. Maybe she found a dead cat or something. That won't be half-bad. He'd like a cat liver, actually.

"Sherlock, wait!" she came panting near him and stopped to pick up her breath. "Don't you want to meet the freshers? Oh, I'm so excited! Come on!"

And before Sherlock was allowed to object, he found himself being dragged by the sleeve of his shirt towards the main block of the building past the Life Sciences' HoD's and Chemistry's HoD's offices, which stood like the emblem of nepotism amongst the swirling throngs of other students. Sherlock really thought that she should not behave so childishly while going past them and then blame it all on Sherlock, especially not when the HoD could actually hear her excited squeals of "Sherlock!"

Truth be told, Sherlock was not interested to meet the first years at all. He knew what was going to happen, and he frankly had no wish to interact with the immature freshmen freshly out of schools where cartoon penises on every drawing was their idea of a joke.

Molly's need for inclusion was sometimes too much for him to handle.

Nevertheless, he grudgingly followed Molly over the terrace, the computer department and through two flights of stairs to reach the aforementioned lecture room. Sherlock tried to shake Molly off, but she wouldn't let go of him. Turned out, she wasn't the only one who wanted him there. One half of the entire bunch of his peers were leering at him, something that Sherlock tried not to regard with prickly suspicion.

The other half were, of course, inside the class, posing as the welcoming committee to the poor freshmen and some light hazing. Well, hazing was traditional, even if abolished.

"Yes, the topper's here!" One of them, one of Molly's friends perhaps, cried on seeing him. "Sherlock Holmes is here!"

Sherlock tried not to roll his eyes. Her exclamation made him sound like an out-of-work celebrity who depended on talk shows for survival.

"Yeah, the last guy remaining!" One of the guys bellowed, as if they took care that every senior interacted with the freshmen. "Oi, Holmes is here!"

His peers congregated around him, trying to look oh-so-comfortable with him. Well, they could be, now that they were all one united group against him and that if Sherlock uttered even a single word, they'd hack him to pieces.

"It's not a big deal," said one of them, a big oaf sort of chap who made Sherlock wonder about how someone like him could manage a steady girlfriend. "We've decided that you're going to mingle with them in your own "style".

Sherlock simply let his eyes dart from one person to other. Even if he hadn't bothered to catalogue their names, he knew what each and every single one of them were like, what their fears and ambitions were. Sherlock just assumed that he was naturally gifted at that sort of thing, and he never thought for even one second before using it to his advantage.

"Look," one of Molly's girl friends snapped her fingers in front of his eyes as his peers surrounded him in a circle. Sherlock knew that this was not because they were accepting him or something. This had everything to do with them being entertained. "Those poor sods haven't had their cell biology lecture till now, so. . ." another boy came dangerously close to putting his arm over his shoulders, "you just need to act as their lecturer for this hour, alright? Give them a sense of the _real_ St. Bart's, y'know."

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow. Seriously? This was their idea of _fun_? At least the seniors from last year had put up a better show.

"And tuck that shirt in, Holmes. We can't have you looking like some bleeding slacker!"

Sherlock was vaguely aware of someone painfully combing his hair into looking respectable.

"Nice wig, Holmes. What's it made of?"

He huffed as he tried to ignore the question, resisting a reply along the lines of _your girlfriend's chest hair_ , and going with something like, "What's in it for me?"

One of them cackled up, and soon did the rest with Molly looking uncertain whether to join in with them for whether to be in league with Sherlock, "You get to insult, as much as you like!"

Sherlock blinked as someone tucked his shirt in. He did _not_ insult, and certainly not because it was his idea of golf.

"And you get to prat on about whatever nonsense goes on in your head, y'know. Win-win."

Sherlock desperately tried to hide, but he knew that Molly could see his face falling a little. It was better not to be included than like this. Nonetheless, he did not deny to himself that he did want to do it for some reason he couldn't really understand and therefore, he could safely blame to sentiment. He simply heaved a sigh, because for once, the stupidity of his peers actually seemed lucrative to him.

"Why me?"

"Oh, come on. We need you to _interact,_ Sherlock," one of them simpered as he put his arms around Sherlock's shoulders. Sherlock wasn't really touch-phobic, but in this case, the guy really stank of brewery and low tar, "come down from that high mountain and interact with us mortals for once."

"I can talk all by myself when I need to, thanks a lot," Sherlock practically growled, trying to push him away as discreetly as possible and not let the odour of beer rub off on him. The last thing he needed was the stench of alcohol on him. "I don't need your help."

"Christ, Holmes, just stop being so fucking serious about everything, alright? Be brave. _Be cool_. Just do it!"

God, the guy didn't have sand enough to smoke good tar and he was talking about being "brave and cool" by drinking in public during day time. Another all-suffering sigh. "Who am I playing?"

Someone clapped him painfully on his back. Sherlock tried to duck, "Atta boy. We all decided. . . you'll play Simpson."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes a bit, wondering if he had heard properly, "Don't be an idiot. Simpson doesn't teach first years. They know that."

"No they don't. But they do know that he's the HoD—"

"—And I have to shave my hair off and get lots of bags under my eyes to be Simpson!"

"They don't _know_ what Simpson looks like, that's the point."

Sherlock looked confused. " _I_ knew what Simpson looked like before I even came here—"

"That's because you're a freak, Holmes, and they're not. . . at least don't seem to be 'til now."

Sherlock blinked twice at the casual and crude comeback, "That's such a. . . _sweet_ compliment. May I pay you one in return?"

"Aw, come on, Holmes. Don't be such a sensitive drama queen. Be a love and be Simpson, please."

"He can't be both!" Somebody cackled, and the rest followed suit. Sherlock tried not to give them a strained impertinent smile as he slouched his shoulders, wanting to tell her that "sensitive" and "drama queen" were redundant, but then they'd just start calling him "freak" again and Sherlock would begin to ponder whether that was the best insult they were capable of or if their dictionary was really so limited.

There seemed something incredibly wrong-footed about the idea or posing as Simpson of all people and lecturing poor freshmen about but it was better this than boredom anytime. The boys and girls crowded around him gave him triumphant smiles when the noticed the acquiescing slouch in his shoulders.

"Don't tell me you're expecting me to teach. You know you'll get _bored_ with that."

They handed him something written on a page torn from the end of a cheap notebook, something that almost made Sherlock want to take his own notebook and copy the whole thing down in it. If they were going to do something like this, they'd better use a better quality paper instead. In a corner, Molly seemed disapproving. She hadn't known that this was what her friends had called Sherlock for.

"Aw, Holmes. We didn't know you cared so much." One of them grinned.

"We know you know everything and all that," another girl began, one of Molly's friends who simply used her because Molly always completed her assignments on time, "but this is your quiz for today, alright? Just go along with it, yeah?"

"And you know what we'll do if you even try to venture into the 'c' of cell."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. Again. He was getting slightly tired of it. As tired as one could get trying to keep track of who was saying what to who. "Fine. Whatever. Get your goons out first."

"Oh, they're not ours," one of the girls said. "That's the Students' Union doing some sort of. . . survey and intro thing."

She leered at him. Sherlock tried not to reel backwards. The stench of perfume was too strong for him. He wanted to cough right in her face, just to show her how unappealing it was.

"Creeps," one of them passed a comment.

"Shut that hole!" Another slapped the aforementioned on his back as he whispered. "D'you wan' to be crucified or something?"

It took the group of Students' Union people fifteen more minutes to come out. Sherlock was too well-known in the university to barge straight in and drive them away in the guise of a teacher. Even if he hadn't been known, driving them out like that would be useless; the Science Students' Union people had rapport with almost all the teachers in the university. As they trickled out of the class, they glared at the gang of second years standing near the door, warning them not to harass their juniors.

His peers gave them a bordering-on-friendly smile, trying to come across as non-threatening. Sherlock didn't make his Holmes-ian sigh audible; he knew that it would provoke more spirits from his already-highly-spirited peers. There was one thing he had learnt during his freshman year, and it was that people in universities were much more twisted and egoistical than in school, and that he _had_ to get on with whatever small things they told him instead of being stupidly courageous and standing up to them. They might be cowards but they were several, and he was only one, and he certainly wasn't one of those heroes in movies who could fight down a dozen men double their size single-handedly. At any rate, they were pathetic and their requests even so, nothing that crossed the line.

He didn't even know why he was doing this, except that he somehow wanted to do this. Molly kept making apology eyes at him. Sherlock had half-a-mind to tell her to shove it.

At an angle, he could see the classroom. He could see their faces; they changed every year, but the expression remained the same. . .

Sherlock shook his head before he could think more fanciful thoughts. Fuck it, he would go in, he'd do it for some time and that was going to be it.

"Go in!" One of them almost pushed him inside. Sherlock stumbled a bit, but made his way in without being much harassed. The students seemed attentive at the newcomer, but not enough to believe that he was going to be the professor. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the last benches. Half of his peers were inside. Why did the Union people not say anything to that?

Sherlock realised. This was not a hazing thing for the first years. This was a setup for him. He took one step backward and tried to walk out of class. He really despised Molly's "friends".

"Oh, no. Go IN!" Half-a-dozen hands pushed him back in, and Sherlock made his way back in behind the rest of the second years as he fixed his hair. Every eye followed him as he put his bookbag down on the desk. No one made a single move except for the second years sitting at the back rows who tittered whether or not Sherlock did something. Sherlock resisted rolling his eyes. God, their sense of humour was more pathetic than they were.

Well, here we go.

"What are you dickheads staring at?" Sherlock suddenly bellowed in a very apt imitation of Simpson. "Get out your notes, I'm your bloody professor!"

Cheers erupted from the last bench as the second years clapped and cheered, "Go, Simpson! Woo-hoo!"

Sherlock turned to the board and wrote down in block letters: DR. PETER J. SIMPSON. The cheers intensified while the freshmen still looked clueless about the humour that spurred the second years on. Little did they know what was awaiting them during the freshers' party.

"Shut the fuck up," one of his peers boomed at the rest of the class. Sherlock's eyes settled on Molly. She just stared blankly at him, flanked by her two friends who didn't give a damn about her. He gritted his teeth. They didn't deserve to breathe the same air as her.

"Thank you, Mr. . ." he trailed off, not knowing the name of that person. Sherlock rubbed his palms together and looked at the slightly confused and trying-and-failing-to-be-amused-and-not-intimidated-instead freshmen. He had no wish to teach, ever, if freshmen actually looked like this from the view that the professor's desk gave him. He couldn't handle that amount of stupidity. He was sure that even Molly had put up a better front.

"Right then," he leaned against the desk awkwardly as the freshmen actually looked like they believed him to be their professor even with the second years sitting with them in the class, "that's my name, Dr. Simpson, or whatever you would deign to call me—"

"Ooh, Dr. Simpson. Tell us all about crows and cuckoos, _Dr. Simpson!_ "

"Shut up," Sherlock roared. It did give him a satisfaction to be able to do what he usually didn't. He ran his eyes up and down the paper that they had given him. It made his eyebrows almost disappear into his hair. What they had called "quiz" was well. . . utter nonsense, something to do with someone's weirdest fantasy with the opposite sex. If sex was the only thing they were capable of making jokes about, then they were much more pathetic than he initially thought.

"I'm not doing this," he said quietly, waved the paper at the bunch of idiots that made up the bulk of his batch. "Apologies," he tried his best to make his best _sorry_ face at the first years who were evidently confused at what was going on, "but I'm not your teacher, people. And if anyone from the second years," at this point, his voice was drowned by an intense wave of protest and booing, "tells you that you can come to Sherlock Holmes for any help with whatever doubts you have in your laughably lucid coursework, they're just fooling you—"

Before he could duck, a shoe hit him right in the stomach and most of the class burst into laughter. Sherlock gritted his teeth angrily; this was really past all limits. He contemplated throwing that trainer right in the face of that person, but in that case he would have to disinfect himself and he really wasn't the one to put in the effort. With a silent swear, he picked it up gingerly and threw it right out of the window.

"You tosser!" The guy who had thrown his trainer at him stood up angrily, but the other boys restrained him down, "Give me back my fucking trainer!"

"Go get it yourself," Sherlock retorted smoothly, the _obviously_ implied heavy in the air. His peers stared at him half in anger, the other half in irritation for having blown the setup which was proving to be entertaining. The guy who had thrown a trainer on him tore the others off him, and instantly lunged for Sherlock, knocking his bookbag off his shoulder and pinned him against the board. Sherlock tried to block his punches but his attacker was far too big and strong for him. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see some of them trying to shake him off him with calls of "He's not worth it, mate" and something along the lines of "the _real_ Simpson will be here any minute, I sent the text", but he didn't give up.

Sherlock didn't have much clue about what was happening in the class, being too busy to block his inexpert punches and trying to wriggle out of his grip. A kick to his shin and to his side had the guy cowering immediately. Sherlock wasn't the one to fight dirty, but self-preservation was his top priority.

"What's this? _What's happening_?" came a very familiar voice. A familiar hateful voice. The grip on the collar of his shirt was released as Sherlock finally took notice of the class. All his peers had fled, except for the guy who had assaulted him, and Molly, who was trying her best to shake him off Sherlock. The freshmen were staring wide-eyed at them, and at the door.

Sherlock panted from exertion. He knew exactly who it was. He pushed the guy off him with great effort, and tried to exude nonchalance as he collected his bookbag quietly while his fingers still trembled from the exertion of the fight. He knew that Simpson could see him still flushed from the fight as he wiped the blood from the cut on his lip. He avoided Simpson's and Molly's eyes, not believing that _he_ had even bothered to get into a fight with that lump of useless flesh.

"What is _happening_?" came Simpson's almost shocked voice.

Sherlock wanted to push past the professor coolly, the momentary anger that had risen to the surface still not having subsided. His heart was hammering in his chest and he was still panting, but he tried to control his respiration and not make it any more obvious. He should've known better. That the entire thing was a ruse to get him and probably Molly into trouble, he realised. He just thanked himself that he hadn't continued with the "light hazing" drama. He'd have been in much worse trouble then.

Simpson strode into the class, his markedly calculating expression and eyes taking in every detail, "Who's the CR?"

Nobody dared to point at a short boy as he raised a hand which could well have been trembling. Sherlock sometimes wondered how Simpson was able to inspire such terror in other students. He always found his face on the verge of comical, not frightening, not in the slightest. Sherlock tried not pinch himself for being so stupid, for falling into the unnecessary need for acceptance from his peers and for playing himself to their tunes as the HoD turned to the board and saw his own name staring back at him. He observed his own name patiently, his arms tucked behind his back as he studied it.

"Oh," he smiled humourlessly at them, "very well then. Let's have a. . . cup of tea in my office."

Sherlock could hear Molly gulping. The boy who had attacked Sherlock grabbed the first opportunity and slithered away just as Simpson turned back to the class. Sherlock wanted to laugh out loud despite the situation. Pathetic coward.

"Get Dr. Arnold Meyers from Building No. 2, third floor."

The CR of their batch tried to look cool, "Which. . . room, sir?"

"His office, you moron!" He lost his composure for a second as he practically barked at the unsuspecting newbie, "Every professor has his name plate outside his office!"

"Y-yes sir," saying so, the CR made his way hurriedly out, trying not to look completely freaked out. Simpson strode past Sherlock, noting the absence of a huge mass of flesh beside him, but he didn't say anything. Molly beckoned Sherlock with her stern, slightly frightened eyes and he followed her.

It was a grim walk through the University Science Building No. 3. Sherlock had been to Simpson's office loads, and Molly even more. She was the victim of Simpson's brainwashing most of the time; the man tried to convince her that Sherlock was a negative influence on her and her academics because he believed that if Sherlock didn't have any follower (which Molly wasn't, thank you very much) who warranted his actions all the time (which she didn't at all) and if he was left out without a companion, maybe then he'd come down from whatever Mt. Olympus he supposedly believed himself to be on.

Sherlock had rolled his eyes when Molly had first given him _that_ explanation, even though it did make sense. It did explain why most of the people tried to separate Sherlock from Molly and make him friendless.

Little did they know that each time she listened and got over with it, she loyally went back and recited to Sherlock whatever he said and the two of them laughed insanely over it.

But as Sherlock approached Simpson's office, there was already someone there waiting outside it. His eyes met the deep blue of Dr. Watson, and the latter smiled at him.

Sherlock almost felt his eyes going wide with. . . an unnamed something. _Surprised_ didn't even begin to cover it.

That classified as "acknowledging his presence". It was almost too much for Sherlock. With the adrenaline from the fight still pumping inside him, the restlessness that he had come to associate with Dr. Watson felt a hundred times intense. Busy cataloguing the cascading feelings in him, he almost failed to smile back. The professor soon lost his smile as his eyes met what Sherlock could only predict as those of Simpson's and he tried to look serious, the way he was when he wore his glasses. Interesting, that.

Molly's accidental stepping on his foot pulled him back into focus. The polished wooden door had the nameplate bearing  the words _Dr. Peter J. Simpson, Head of Department, Life Sciences and Biotechnology_ , his various collections of degrees that Sherlock had not even heard or read of. He tried to meet Dr. Watson's eyes again, only to find that the man was now looking elsewhere, almost pointedly.

"I'll be a moment, Dr. Watson," Simpson said brusquely, eyeing Sherlock with utmost loathing, "Try the settee. I won't be a. . ." at this point, the corner of his lips twitched almost unnoticeably, but somehow it gave Sherlock an impression that Dr. Peter J. Simpson was capable of terrible things, "minute."

He gave a stiff nod and tried to check his watch as discreetly as he could. Sherlock wanted to laugh. Simpson wasn't going to rip his head off for checking the time. Poor little prude.

Nevertheless, Dr. Watson took a seat, oblivious to Sherlock's lingering gaze on him before Simpson closed the door and eliminated the last line of vision between them.

It was going to take _much_ longer than a minute.


	4. Chapter 4

Professor Dr. Peter J. Simpson, a balding, slim, sunken-eyed and haughty-looking man far too energetic to be in his late-fifties was a Hitler in every way and in his eyes, Sherlock manifested as the embodiment of the entire Jewish community. . . or, at least, that's what Sherlock thought. He sometimes felt surprised that Simpson hadn't yet ended in asylum out of having to see happy undergrads every day. A manipulative bastard and a sadist in every manner who loved breeding people like himself and making others feel persecuted.

Needless to say, everyone fought to be in Simpson's good books. Every student, first year or third year knew that impressing Simpson was their ticket to a safe, happy, interference-free uni life. Sherlock didn't believe that. He was way smarter than Simpson to fall victim to his threats.

But right now, Sherlock and Molly were watching the professor, with Molly looking almost comically guilty for something she hadn't done and Sherlock slouching against the door, with no intention to spend his coveted evening holed up in the office. Their eyes identically tracked Simpson's broad-shouldered figure as he put on a kettle. Sherlock had thought that "making tea" was just a euphemism of sorts. Turned out, he had been serious.

The office was large. Obviously, it had to be. But it was non-standard large. Simpson was the HoD of one of the oldest departments in St. Bart's. French windows, and the office being on fourth floor gave one the uninterrupted view of the football ground, the open air theatre and the dysfunctional water tank which was left as sort of a monument overlooking St. Bart's. There were rows and rows of hardbound books to the left from where Sherlock stood. Behind Simpson's desk was a large counter on which gleaming trophies and prizes were arranged. A large photograph and degree certificates were hung on the wall. Sherlock eyed them with distaste.

The padded chairs facing Simpson's heavy desk looked inviting, especially for Sherlock who had been standing for the past hour and was beginning to have cramps in his calf muscles. He took a step and felt a firm grip on his wrist. Molly was gritting her teeth and trying to look very normal about it.

"Where are you going?" She leaned towards him as discreetly as possible and whispered frantically. Sherlock frowned in confusion.

"To the. . . chairs. My legs are hurting."

The grip tightened, bordering on painful. Sherlock twisted his wrists to force her grip away. "Don't you dare leave me, Sherlock. I will kill you if you leave me," she seethed through clenched teeth.

"Just stuff it," he muttered as Simpson kept watching the water boil, "this is all _your fault_."

"Shut. Up. Do you have some deodorant?"

"If I do, I'll have men's."

"If _I_ had it, it would've been women's, obviously," she murmured quietly. "Don't you get why we're here?! _You_ stink of alcohol, plus you were the one having punch-ups. It's your fault—"

"Shhh," Sherlock yanked his wrist away successfully, "he's turning."

Instantly, Simpson turned to them. His smile was strained and waning at the edges. Molly and Sherlock assumed traditional shameful bowed heads and guilty slouched shoulders. Sherlock fidgeted as Simpson poured the tea into small delicate teacups. Sherlock now knew why Simpson was so happy. Although blatantly unheeded, smoking and drinking was prohibited in the university campus. Sherlock stank of beer; that's why the other boys were being so friendly with him and rubbing the stench off on him. Bastards.

"Well, don't just stand there," Sherlock thought that there was unmistakeably triumph in his voice. "Sit down! Or do you want me to help you into the chairs?"

Molly looked close to a complete mental meltdown. Sherlock simpered a "told you" under his breath. She elbowed him in the ribs. Sherlock gave out a quiet, painful yelp.

"Leave your bookbag on my desk though, Mr. Holmes," the professor ordered and Molly flinched beside him. Sherlock's eyes tracked Simpson's hunched figure go over to the gramophone—yes, he had an actual Edison-era gramophone—and put on a vinyl of Symphony No. 9. Sherlock shivered as the opera music danced in his ears.

"Empty your bookbag, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock glanced at Molly and knew what was coming. As he set to empty the bookbag, the detritus from it having being accumulated for the past three years because Sherlock never bothered to clean the litter, an empty beer bottle rolled down the desk and the label stared at Sherlock accusingly. Sherlock, for the second time, felt stupider than he had ever felt. As soon as he had caught sight of Dr. Watson, he had lost control of himself. Forgotten to take precautions against what his peers always tried on him and generally failed, except for this time.

He had never felt more humiliated.

Sherlock clenched his jaw as Simpson served them tea casually. Molly took a tentative sip under his stone cold glare. Sherlock's tea remained untouched and without even realising, he began to count the minutes till the condensing air formed a ring of water around the base of the teacup. The room only echoed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 till then.

"I'd offer you some biscuits with that," Simpson simpered after some time, "but they're Danish, and very rare."

He fixed Sherlock with a hard look and settled behind his desk on his chair as Sherlock kept the eye-contact with him. He could just guess the look on Molly's face, the one of utter shock and disbelief.

"Alcohol is strictly forbidden during university hours in the proper campus," he stated peremptorily as he took his tea with two sugars and watched him with an infuriatingly blank expression. Sherlock knew that. Sherlock also knew that there was a pub behind the Old Building in the campus which sold beer and the chaps who stayed in the halls loved to binge-drink, but he refrained from saying that. He simply sighed an all-suffering sigh. He wished his breath stunk of cigarette smoke so much that Simpson choked on it. Although, in his defence, it wouldn't have improved his current predicament in any way.

Simpson took Sherlock's inability of response as an affirmative, "Explain."

Sherlock gazed at him and stated bluntly, "That is not mine, sir."

"I know; you're always so innocent. So I just want you to explain to me how this got into _your_ bookbag."

There was a touch of mockery in his tone, one that Sherlock decided to ignore. "I haven't touched it. You'll find someone else's fingerprints on it."

"It still doesn't explain _how_ it got into your bookbag." Simpson deadpanned but Sherlock knew that he felt victorious at having caught Sherlock at something he hadn't done. He never drank. He refused food for the fear that it might slow him down, let alone alcohol. Despite the situation, it made Sherlock want to laugh out. Just how pathetic could people be sometimes?

"I won't explain something that I clearly didn't do," he said angrily, "I _will_ take this to the Union if you choose to accuse me wrongly. If you're thinking about suspension or even expulsion, you'll have to make me take a breathanalyzer test right now to establish my guilt. The broken seal on that beer bottle isn't more than an hour old, so you can still detect alcohol in my breath if I've had it. Just a simple anonymous chit—or in this case, text—won't be worth all that hassle, will it, sir? If you _were_ to rusticate me, this discussion would have been over by now."

"It's not personal. Don't make this personal, Mr. Holmes," Simpson spoke smoothly, concealing his mobile phone. He was too used to Sherlock knowing things to look surprised at that. Sherlock scoffed inwardly at his pitying smirk; Simpson always took things personally. "It will not matter to me whether you stay here or not, although I'd _love_ to kick you out, my personal opinion. You have violated the university's policy on alcohol. I have no choice but to hand you over to your department head who'll no doubt forward a suspension letter to the Board of Directors."

"I haven't had the time," Sherlock countered, blowing out a breath. "I was in the cafeteria during lunch and in Anatomy the sixth hour, Molly can attest to that. I spent the next two periods in classroom no. B 40, cameras can attest to that," Sherlock sipped his tea and kept his eye-contact with Simpson. Beside him, Molly kept kicking him under the table but Sherlock pretended to take no notice.

He thought it better if he didn't take Dr. Watson's name. That man was the only teacher who let Sherlock sit in class during the free hours. That man was different. . . and a good man. He was in no position to pass that up and cause him trouble because of his own sullied reputation. Simpson already tried hard to separate Molly from him, deeming him as "ill company" for her. If he got wind of this new development, he might even try and brainwash Dr. Watson.

"As for rusticating me," Sherlock began speaking again when he saw that Simpson was beginning to lay his own factoids, "if this were enough, you'd already have printed the letter you have ready in soft copy in your computer, sir. And we would have been standing in Head of Department of Chemistry's office. And it would have been on the way to the Dean of Students' office."

Simpson looked amused despite himself, despite what Sherlock had said, "Is that so? Perhaps I ought to have done that." Molly sat stone-faced, scared to death beside him at his tone. He felt a sickly sensation in his gut at seeing her in discomfort, "I really don't have a letter typed out, Mr. Holmes. That would be interfering with your HoD's decision. But since you seem so eager . . ." He pulled his laptop out before Sherlock could say anything. 

"Ms. Hooper," Simpson cleared his throat and held out his laptop. Sherlock had a hunch that he had been rash, too rash at handling this, "can you type a letter for me?"

Molly looked at Sherlock for confirmation, for support, anything at all.  Sherlock wished he knew how to comfort her. He didn't say anything, didn't do anything except for averting his eyes. He might end up saying something far worse. He didn't trust himself when it came to comforting.

"I don't have all day, Ms. Hooper. You can make googly eyes with Mr. Holmes during the afterhours, not here in my office," Simpson's sharp voice rang out like an ambulance siren. "Will you type a letter for me?"

"D-definitely, sir," she stammered.

Simpson's eyes positively glittered as he handed out his laptop. Molly took it gingerly and Sherlock vaguely knew what was coming, "Very well, then. Please type. . ."

Molly scrambled to open Pages, as she kept on murmuring a gentle sea of apologies. Sherlock kept kicking her under the desk this time, knowing that her useless apologising would just annoy Simpson even more.

"It is my painful duty to inform you. . . that your ward is rusticated . . . No, sorry, delete that."

Molly hit the backspace, trying not to make a sound as she deleted it. "Yes, sir?"

Simpson closed his eyes and leaned against the back of his chair, "Go back. . . Your ward, Ms. Molly Hooper. . . is rusticated from the University of—come on, type!"

Molly gulped, her eyes glazed with tears that didn't fall, "Sir, we're s-sorry—"

"Please type further," he ordered sternly.

"Sir, please sir!" Molly kept begging. Sherlock felt sick and angry. None of it was his fault. Or Molly's. He despised the man. He willed himself to calm down. Anger won't help him. Not in the slightest.

"Our decision is final and irrevocable—"

"This is none of Molly's fault, sir," Sherlock said, his voice steady. "We were set up."

"You were found in a class full of freshmen stinking of alcohol, fighting with your peers and ridiculing my name. There's marker ink on your hands, you can't deny that you didn't write it. I don't think that this situation classifies as being "set up". We strive to maintain St. Bart's reputation as one of the finest universities in England and around the world, not to let immature pupils like yourselves destroy it in front of freshmen. Now, you will _shut up_ and you, Ms. Hooper, will print it. Or else, I _will_ have you suspended!"

Again, a gentle miserable murmur begging for pardon from Molly. Simpson glared at her as if she had just asked for both his kidneys.

"You have the whole class as witness," Sherlock spoke quietly, trying to come across as nonchalant, "The person you called me my "peer" attacked me. I simply reacted in self-defence."

He knew he was making a hollow statement; the first years were definitely not going to side with him against a guy who had just demonstrated his brute strength in front of everyone. The whole thing was a mess. Technically, the whole thing was Molly's fault. Had she not called Sherlock, this wouldn't have happened. But she couldn't have known. She was always so keen to include Sherlock in everything she did. Because that's what friends did, Sherlock thought bitterly.

"Sir, give me one chance. . . please," Molly begged helplessly to a unflappable Simpson. He sighed.

"Alright then, remove your name from the letter. . . and put in Mr. Holmes' name in it."

That seemed to upset Molly further. Sherlock shifted in his chair, "I don't think it is appropriate to continue this discussion without a guardian present. Given the means, I can prove that Molly and I are not guilty."

"And I don't think it's up to you to decide what is appropriate, Mr. Holmes. You stink of alcohol—"

"A breath-analyser test will tell you that I didn't consume any alcoholic beverage. As for ridiculing your name, I was forced. It is not my fault. Molly is a consistent student here. Her peers can attest to her conduct. There's no concrete basis on which you can suspend us."

The corners of Simpson's mouth twitched. Sherlock believed he had won.

 

* * *

 

John tapped his fingers on his knee as he looked around at the lobby of Dr. Simpson's office. It was much like his own, except that Simpson's office was bigger and that he had a waiting room of sorts. John was just thankful that there was air-conditioning even here. He didn't know exactly what had possessed him to stand outside when Simpson had abruptly brought their talk to a pause (and hopefully not end) because of his text alert that had brought a spring in each his step.

He had just asked him to stay in the lobby until he came back, and now he was back with that Holmes guy and his sidekick. John could only infer that the text had something to do with Holmes. Although what it was, he didn't know. Though it was clear that Simpson was more than pleased with the development.

He tried to calm his foot tapping on the ground in resonance with his fingers and stared at the door of Simpson's office, behind which surely Holmes and his girlfriend (probably) were having the time of their life with Simpson.

Simpson had said that he won't be a minute. It was taking him way too long. Maybe the Holmes guy had done something too drastic. It was probable. Even though there was a certain mysterious reserved-ness to him that was completely contrary to what John had thought of him earlier, Sherlock Holmes could be incredibly rude on some occasions; that coupled with his youth only accentuated his rash recklessness and the wrong-footed sense that he was on the top of the world and that nothing could hurt him.

In a way, that was right. John had had five classes with Holmes till date. Where John had thought that he was an obnoxious loudmouth who loved hearing his own voice and demeaning other people, it turned out that it was not so. Holmes was not overly talkative when it came to staying back after his class. He was quiet and reserved. But Sherlock was just so frighteningly intelligent that the entire world seemed slow to him. Like it was natural for an adult to assume that he could read or write faster than a toddler could, Sherlock's sense that he was better than most people—if not all—was almost entirely correct. John really couldn't blame him.

John shook himself and filtered his thoughts. He had come over here to finalise his position in this university. He sighed. This would be it. If his dad were alive, he would have been proud of him. Instead of proud of a son who had the balls to survive the army. No, he had said that people who came back from army were never the same again. John's grandpa was never the same when he came back.

John didn't say that his father was wrong. He had just seen one side to the picture, suffered his childhood and didn't want his boy to be what his father had been. But. . . he could've been a doctor, at least? But not when he had spilled the word _army doctor_.

He wished he could enrol for the medical programme again, start from the scratch. He didn't have the strength; he didn't have the motivation anymore.

He went back to tapping his feet on the ground. An ornamental shrub on the sitting table thrummed its little leaves accordingly.

Minutes later, Holmes came out of the door, looking ashen-faced, the bookbag almost falling off his bony shoulders. John tried not to be curious. His eyes simply followed him for a moment or two before he settled back into his self-imposed meditation.

He could feel the boy's eyes on him now. He had felt them when Holmes had entered. He tried not to shift in his chair. He sneaked a glance to his right. Holmes was uncertain about something, if he had to go by the tapping of his feet on the floor. John could tell that something bad had happened. Really bad. Should he say something? Should he ignore him?

He turned to his right, pursing his lips tightly. The uncertainty that John thought was there in him wasn't present on his face. He looked exactly like he always did before he started to get bored—pokerfaced. Although, there was a little irregularity in his blinking. And a hitch here and there in his respiration.

He thought about the safest thing to ask without Holmes sulking off. They had already established that he could be a little moody. 'How did the talk go?' Absolutely not, that was such a direct intrusion of privacy. 'D'you need something?' That could be interpreted as bossiness, Holmes would run away if  Dr. Simpson inside had been bossy too, which he usually was.

Maybe he should just ask him the real question, he thought.

He cleared his throat gingerly, attracting Holmes' attention to him before he spoke, "Um. . . d'you have any idea when Dr. Simpson will be free?"

"Oh," Holmes began, eyeing him from top to bottom, "I won't go in today if I were you, professor. At any case, he may have forgotten you already."

That stung a bit. To know that people were ignoring professors for the sake of troublesome students. But that was overcome by curiosity. Waves of curiosity.

"Why is that?" John asked. Holmes raised an eyebrow.

"Because your boss is a prick!" he spat, and John recoiled out of reflex at the bile in his tone, "A horrible human being who enjoys preying on the weak and re-affirming his position in this draconian institute!"

John gave a hollow chuckle, speaking automatically, "Well, who doesn't?"

Holmes turned sharply upon hearing the comment that John sensed, belatedly, was a bit offhand, and glared at him. John wasn't sure that he'd have glared at his professors that way back in his time, no matter how outrageous their comments. But this was a different time, a different kid.

"I don't know about you, professor," he sounded a bit disgusted, "but I certainly don't!"

Now that was something real to chuckle at. The Sherlock Holmes? The one who laid everyone's private goings-on bare for the world to hear and jeer about? The kid who gave men twenty to thirty year older than him a run for their money? He didn't enjoy saying all of that in public? Impossible.

Sherlock frowned at him disbelievingly at him chuckling, but then chose to look away, perhaps too preoccupied to debate with him. John simply tried to assume that they had done something stupid and that something had happened inside and Holmes was now worried about _something_. He really shouldn't ask what that _something_ was. If Holmes did not wish to divulge it to him, he shouldn't ask.

"I meant it, by the way, professor," Holmes spoke after a few minutes. John met his eyes and rose to his feet. He didn't loom mad anymore.

"Pardon me?"

"That it's better if you came tomorrow. Simpson won't be in a good mood and I'd avoid him even on a paper-checking schedule. He might fire you on a whim."

John wanted to laugh at Sherlock insinuating that Simpson's happy hour was when he checked papers, even though it wasn't very funny. "You don't have to worry about that," he said in a low voice. He really didn't want to be heard talking to a boy who had recently been the centre of his boss' animosity, "but thanks for your free advice anyway."

"Okay," Holmes shrugged, chewing on his bottom lip and then looked away suddenly, "your funeral."

John gave him a stiff nod and looked away too. He pondered over Holmes' words for some time. He was still standing there, waiting for his girlfriend probably. John felt out of place again. He wondered whether he should go. His better judgment told him that he should trust Holmes. He did, in a weird way. Holmes didn't seem like the guy who would get someone in serious trouble. He probably was right. After all, Holmes had been here for more than a year, and it was only a month since John had arrived. It was obvious that he knew better.

But there was also a what-if in John's mind. What if Holmes turned out to be wrong after all? What if Simpson would be expecting him even after Holmes' girlfriend left? Simpson was very sensitive when it came to such things. And John didn't want to displease him for the second time that month.

Holmes' silence, although familiar, was disconcerting, to say the least. John glanced at his watch. He counted to five and stood up. Holmes didn't pay him an ounce of attention as he kept leaning against the railing of the balcony. He just stared up at an orange evening sky shot with purple streaks. He seemed to be writing—no, drawing or scribbling—something on an A4 size sheet of paper.

"This won't do it," Holmes murmured to himself. Seeing as John had nothing better to do till nine, when he had a dinner with Jeanette, he decided to humour himself, but carefully.

"Erm. . . thank you, Sherlock, for that."

The soft orange light of the evening sun clashed on his pale face with the artificial lights from the Block 3 of the UG Science building. John nodded stiffly. It would have been a wonderful and a very challenging scene to paint for an artist.

"For what?" He asked incredulously.

"You know. . ." John tucked his arms behind his back and squinted at him. Slowly, Holmes straightened up. He was taller than John, though the way he stood, shoulders still slumped, made it seem as though he wasn't, "for saving my time." He looked away, "It wouldn't have been convenient for me today."

"Clearly," Holmes looked away too, folding the paper and dumping it in his bag before John had a chance to see what it was, "then you can thank me again." He smirked.

John blinked, "What for?"

"You have plans tonight that are not going to go well," Sherlock sighed, still smirking. John could detect a faint odour of beer on his person and now had an idea why Sherlock had been in trouble, "Might I suggest abandoning them?"

John reeled backwards, "What?!" He had plans with Jeanette, but then Abbott had warned him that Holmes could do that sort of thing. Tell him all about him just by a glance. He should've been prepared at how incredible it felt to have experienced that at last, "What makes you think so?"

Sherlock shrugged, "Just saying. I'm almost always eventually right."

John raised his eyebrows and peered at him from the top of his glasses, "See, that's why I was laughing."

"Oh, so you think I said that on purpose?" Sherlock loomed over him almost threateningly. John still managed to look him down, something he had mastered as a result of spending an entire life being shorter than most men.

"Well, obviously. Your mouth, your words."

Sherlock heaved a tired sigh, "If you say technically, yeah sure."

He couldn't remember any other of his student being so casual with him. He felt the conversation should come to an end.

"Right," he cleared his throat and turned away, holding his head high and knowing that Holmes was watching him go. Moments later, he turned around like a boomerang going back to its master and fell short of almost colliding with Holmes again in the narrow corridor. It wasn't a pleasant experience. Holmes was so bony that it felt like a sledgehammer blow to his ribs, moreover he had been following at quite a fast pace. Whether him, or someone else, John didn't know.

The kid gritted his teeth. Well, not a kid. Holmes couldn't be any younger than nineteen if he was in second year. Almost ten years younger than John was . . . okay, maybe a kid after all.

"What the hell are you doing, sir?" He hissed at a bemused John. "I almost lost him!"

"Sorry. Lost. . . who?" John said weakly. Sherlock watched something over his shoulder, his face dismayed. He visibly deflated, "I seem to run through you every time, don't I?"

Holmes deflated even further and slouched. John felt guilty for some reason he wasn't sure of.

"That was a peon carrying my one-week suspension order to the Dean of Students," he grumbled, "I was going to exchange it for this."

He dug into his bookbag and drew out the A4 size sheet. Drawn on it was an anatomically correct drawing (more of a diagram) of a hand with the finger stuck out and the precise replica of Simpson's signature at the bottom right of it. John's eyes widened.

"What is _that_?" He let out a short laugh. Holmes folded his arms, petulant rebellion written plainly on his face. It was equal parts endearing and exasperating. Upon hearing the laugh, he let a small lopsided smirk touch his lips. John could just imagine the Dean of Students expecting a letter of suspension and instead getting this, complete with Simpson's signature.

" _That_ is called 'tit for tat', professor," he growled, "he gets me in trouble, I get him in double trouble. It's fortunate that I know how to fake his signature."

John tried to control his laughter, forcing himself to return to sobriety as he noted how each of Sherlock's lines rhymed. He wondered if that was an accident or on purpose. Maybe an accident. Sherlock didn't seem to be the type of guy to care about rhymes, or hell, anything at all.

Nevertheless, he shook his head slowly, trying to clear it. There was no justification for what Sherlock was about to do; it was inexcusable. "You must have done something wrong. No one gets suspended for no reason."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, and to John's surprise, gave a short laugh, "Apparently, I can be. But I won't be, if I get that letter. And you're going to help me get it."

"Am I?" John asked wryly. He had to give it to Sherlock. The guy had guts. Real guts. Asking his professor to steal his suspension letter.

"Yes you are, professor," John could see that Sherlock was trying his best to keep a smirk off his face, "I lost the guy because of you! And you have nothing better to do now and your plans aren't going to go well anyway."

John stared stubbornly at him for a beat, "How're you going to go get it in the first place?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and suddenly seemed to grow alert and serious. He leaned forward and spoke furtively, "Don't look behind you."

John instinctively turned to look behind him. There was nothing there. Bewildered by the sudden change in Sherlock's demeanour, he turned back to his student, "Why. . . what did you. . . ?"

He sighed exasperatedly and slumped a little upon spotting Sherlock's smirk and his copy of the university newsletter in his hand. He should have expected something like that, "Natural tendency of a human being, _professor_. This is how I'm going to get it."

"Aren't you going to wait for," he jerked his head towards Simpson's office as he gave Sherlock his diagram back, "your. . . girl. . . friend?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "She has her own ways of coaxing out of suspension. I have my own."

"Oh, right," John nodded stiffly, smiling a little, "coaxing, right."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, "Not coaxing the way _you_ were thinking, professor. Simpson is an old man with an erectile dysfunction."

John mentally grimaced at that. He hadn't been thinking that, ew. How could he think that about one of his students? And how did Holmes know something like that? "I wasn't. . . thinking like that. . . Christ, ugh, Sherlock! I really didn't need to hear that."

He shrugged, "I agree. You didn't."

Regardless of his words about getting to retrieve his suspension order, Sherlock stood there, his figure bathing in artificial light now instead of golden orange-ish halo-like light. He seemed. . . expectant. John eyed him top to bottom, his gaze darting from one patch of revealed pale skin to next. Even though he looked determined to avoid his suspension, his feet were pointed towards John. John forced his gaze up and caught the beginnings of a smirk. He forced his eyes away before it could fully form. The silence was getting too loud for him. His palms felt damp.

"You. . . do that. I'm going to wait in Dr. Simpson's office," he spoke, enunciating each syllable clearly and then cleared his throat, "Good evening, Sherlock."

Without another word or glance, he turned away, inwardly wishing Holmes luck with getting his suspension order back.

 

* * *

 

It was for these occasions that John really wished that he had a car or any vehicle of sorts. He really didn't want to begin his third date with Jeanette with a bus or a taxi ride.

Although he didn't know why they needed dates at all. They could just pick off from where they had left off. He and Jeanette had been steady for three years before they broke up—or rather, John did, because he had found out about her affair with some other guy. He really liked Jeanette. He had envisioned a future with her, but then there was a part to her which he could never reconcile with.

Nevertheless, he put on his best shirt, the only pair of socks which didn't smell and the only navy blue jeans he could find. He thought about using product but then he didn't want to go overboard with it. He didn't want to come across as too excited about the prospect of getting back together with her.

He felt nervous. She always eyed his fashion faux-pas with a very critical eye. And he wanted to look his best without coming across as desperate. He eyed his hair in the mirror. Maybe he could just comb it properly. Or maybe he could just use some hair gel. Or maybe he could just. . .

John sighed. Impressing Jeanette was always a hard one. He tried not to think of the accidental pun. He made sure he flossed his teeth properly before going out. He looked at his left shoulder. He always held it in an awkward angle and on the whole, it seemed like a serious handicap when he was too self-conscious.

He smiled at his reflection. His reflection smiled back. He felt happier than he had when he had first joined St. Bart's. He took a last look to himself nodded smartly. Despite what Holmes had said, this date was going to go good. Even though Holmes had been right about the fact that Simpson had already forgotten about him, he wasn't going to be right about this one. He had plans, and they were not going to go awry.

It was going to go good, like it always did.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Sherlock set down with the daunting task of assessing his behaviour from earlier. He took the last page of Molly's notebook because his notebook was apparently too precious to be used, and started scribbling down, like he was writing down the observations from an experiment. Molly was a little pleased when she thought that Sherlock was studying in physics lecture, going by the number of times he had declared quantum mechanics as useless and ambiguous in its hypotheses.

Molly's suspension had been cancelled, and Sherlock's well. . . it would suffice to say that he had become even a bigger target for Simpson now, when the professor had found out what Sherlock had done to his suspension order. He had told Molly all about it, and the two of them had laughed their heads off at it, despite the situation.

Not about his little talk with John Watson though. Sherlock hadn't told her a word of his now strange and perplexing interactions with the professor. He preferred to keep his memories to himself, safe and untainted, careful not to warp them with overuse. Molly didn't suspect anything, as usual. After all, Sherlock thought, he didn't want her to think that he could be like this for anyone.

Halfway between the lecture, Molly peeped over to see what he was writing so importantly. She stared at the first few lines in disbelief that Sherlock managed to hide it from her.

"Sherlock, what're you writing?  _Breathing disorder, rapid pulse, problems with concentration._ . . Sherlock, are you ill?" she squeaked worriedly, her fingers reaching out for his wrist, his pulse, "Is it that flu again? I'll have to tell Mrs. Hudson—"

"NO!" He blurted out, thinking about how Mrs. Hudson always insisted on calling Mycroft when he was ill, and then he cleared his throat, "No. I'm not ill, I checked."

"Well then. . ." she withdrew his hand from on the top of the paper and had a look at the list he had made, "why're you writing this?  _Racing heart, check. Sweaty palms, moderate. Breathing disorder, mild. Problems with concentration, infinitesimally small. . ._  these are symptoms of fever, Sherlock."

He simply pulled his things away petulantly, "I thought you wanted to study."

"I do. But you should tell me if you're ill. . . although you don't look very ill."

Sherlock simply rolled his eyes, "Go back to your books, Molly."

"Hey, one more thing," she reminded him, "would you like to come to the gy—"

"No," he dismissed. He had more important things to do than spending his time doing social niceties. He looked down at his completed list, and now all that was left to do was go online and search for a proper explanation.

 

* * *

 

When Sherlock reached his flat in Baker Street, he threw his bookbag in a corner, his shoes and his socks in another, and settled down on the couch with the laptop on his bony thighs.

"Right then," he typed in _symptoms racing heart shortness of breath sweaty palms_. And the results that returned were not satisfactory. He knew that he didn't have heart problems. He was too young for it, he wasn't obese (in fact, the exact opposite of obese), and there was no history of heart disease in his family. Tachycardia came closest to all the symptoms, but there wasn't any chest pain and he knew, of course he knew that this wasn't tachycardia. All symptoms were pointing at a heart problem. But he was almost sure that he didn't have any.

He called up his mother to know about the history of heart disease in his family, and she fainted right when he uttered the words 'heart disease', so he thought that it probably wasn't a good idea. He thought about asking Mrs. Hudson, but she would simply go on about her hip, so he abandoned that idea as well. By 11 o'clock, when Sherlock saw that he wasn't getting any close to the answer, he called up the one person he would tell everything (most of the things. . . okay, maybe some of the things) **:**  Molly.

But she wasn't answering his texts. He even tried calling, although he hated calling anyone, but she wouldn't answer. At last, he gave up and set towards her flat. He didn't dare to drive, because if he did have a heart problem, he could have an unexpected heart failure right in the middle of the street. This was urgent, and why was she not returning his texts? She always returned his texts, no matter what.

 

* * *

 

In the dim light, Greg lay beside Molly, all wrapped up in her cosy blankets and in the peaceful aftermath of sex. Her parents had gone out, and her cat was sleeping outside. She snuggled in with him, and he inhaled the lavender scent of her brow in. She looked up at his face like an angel in human form as he stroked her cheeks, wiping the tear tracks off her face.

"You alright?" he asked. This was their first time, and Molly had never felt so heavenly, so. . . just good. There was no other word, no other way to describe it.

Before she could nod her head in agreement, the cat outside made a strange harsh, devilish noise, followed by a very human and painful grunt. Molly instantly snapped out of her reverie and straightened up, pulling his T-shirt on herself.

"Your mum and dad?!" Greg hissed, "I thought they weren't returning for a couple of days!"

"They aren't," she shushed him, "Must be a burglar—"

And before she could say anything further, the door opened with a click, revealing a very breathless Sherlock with scratch marks on his arms from the cat, "Molly, I've been. . . trying to call—"

He stopped as he took in the extremely embarrassing sight before him, as Molly covered herself further up with her skirt. She wanted to shout at him. Sherlock had almost got her suspended for something that he had done. Sherlock wouldn't even leave her alone during her first time. But she took a deep breath down her lungs.

"Sherlock, what _are_ you doing here?" Behind her, Greg looked positively murderous. He now knew who to throw a punch to if he and Molly ever broke up.

Sherlock averted his eyes at once, and cleared his throat awkwardly, "You weren't returning my calls! You should've told me you were having sex with Graham—!"

"Greg," he corrected automatically, but Sherlock paid no attention to him.

"Sherlock?!" Molly looked like she would've given up anything to punch him in the face, and yet she squeaked, "No one ever tells their friends that they were having—never mind, you BROKE into my flat! Why did you break into my flat? You could've rung the doorbell!"

"You weren't answering your doorbell!" With that, he promptly turned around, and actually slammed the door behind him. Molly rolled her eyes.

"Sherlock!" She called out.

"Yes?" he poked his head back into the room, happy that Molly had given in to him. But she was having none of it as she threw him an accusatory look, "Did you just slam my bedroom door?"

"No!"

"Close it properly, please. And wait for me in the sitting room."

He gritted his teeth grudgingly, but closed the door properly enough. Behind her, Greg heaved an all-suffering sigh, at which Molly only patted his shoulder, "I think you should go now."

"Brilliant! Simply brilliant! And now you're making me do the walk of shame, all for that dickhead! He almost got you expelled!"

Molly's eyes narrowed as her voice grew shriller, "Don't call him that! And it wasn't his fault that I was _almost_ suspended, not expelled," but then she blinked the indignation away and tried to put on a placating smile, "Can't you do even that for me, please?" said she, as she put her arms around him and kissed him sweetly.

"Would you hurry up?!" came an arrogant, cockblocking voice from the living room. Molly pulled away, "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Is he going to come in every time?" he asked as she handed him his T-shirt.

"Don't worry. If you're good, I'll be sure to secure the fire-exit next time," she said with a wink, blushing at the thought of a next time. They dressed up, and Greg waved a sad goodbye to Molly as he went away, trying not to look at Sherlock's curious expression. Before Sherlock could open his mouth to speak, Molly spoke, "Give me five minutes, will you? I need to shower."

"Molly," said he, knowing exactly how to deflect a shower, "I think I'm ill."

She looked at the bathroom longingly, and then sat down, defeated, "I'll make a deal."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, "What?"

"You let me have shower right now, and then I listen to you—"

"NO! Molly, you don't understand, it's URGENT!"

"So is this. You let me take a shower now, and I'll listen to you. Or, you don't let me take a shower, and you'll have to do the next thing I ask you to do—"

"I won't feed your cats," he spoke at once.

Her stern expression faded into a small smile, "No, I won't waste such a perfectly good opportunity just to feed my cats."

Sherlock thought intensely for five seconds and then nodded, "I'll do the next thing you ask me to do, given its within my physical limits."

She shrugged. She hadn't expected that answer. It must be serious, "What's wrong, Sherlock?"

He produced a precious slip of paper from his pocket, "My symptoms," On it was written every single symptom that he had observed during the day. She ran a weather eye over them, "Okay, looks like a heart problem. Do you. . . does your family have a history of heart ailments, Sherlock?"

"To my knowledge, no."

"Have you gone to a doctor?"

"No."

Molly frowned, "why not?"

"I came to you before. Then if you say that this is serious, then I might go to a doctor."

Molly flushed with pleasure at that. It was certainly good to hear that Sherlock would come to her before he went to a doctor, "Since when have these problems started?"

"Some days ago, in Professor Watson's class."

Molly looked at him as if he were an overgrown insect, "You're pretty. . . yourself in Professor Watson's classes. I didn't notice anything unusual."

"No," Sherlock crossed his legs, "it was when everyone left, and when I was talking to him."

Molly considered this for a moment, "Okay, so. . . it came just like that. . . all of a sudden?" She found it hard to believe.

"No, I had been telling him something about the table of 2, and then he smiled at me. . ." Sherlock trailed off. The illness was very suspicious indeed. Creases appeared between Molly's eyebrows as she pondered over it, and then she went through the list again. Sweaty palms, breathing disorder, racing heart, it all made sense.

"Are you sure, Sherlock?" She asked him again, as if she couldn't believe it. She had known Sherlock since high school, and if anyone asked her whether Sherlock Holmes ever had a crush on someone, she'd say 'no' in a heartbeat. Sherlock didn't seem the type. Poor soul, he was scientifically trying to determine whether he. . .

"Yes, of course," said he, irritated that Molly had even dared to question him on whether he was sure or not.

But Molly wasn't convinced, "Okay, it's not a heart problem, that's for sure. . . but—"

"But what?"

"Erm. . . I'll need more clues for this, okay? I have a hunch what this might be, but since that seems a little short of impossible, I—"

"Should've gone to a doctor," he murmured, annoyed that all that drama had left him where he had begun from, but Molly cut in, "Wait! I didn't say I don't know this. . . it's just, this is highly improbable, okay? God, how am I going to explain this to you?!"

Sherlock watched her frustrated actions suspiciously, "Molly," he started simply, "you know perfectly well that—"

"Yeah, I know, you're as clever as it gets but. . . okay, here we go," she took a deep breath. She never thought that she would be the one who would be having this talk with him, "I know you haven't but let me just ask again. . . Have you ever had a. . . " she dropped her voice as if she were committing blasphemy, "girlfriend?"

Sherlock threw her a dark scowl, "Girlfriend?"

"Or boyfriend?" she cleared her throat, seeing as this case was a little different.

Now he grew really suspicious, "Is this a not-so-subtle way of asking whether I'm gay or not, because I don't think that this bears any importance on—"

"No, it does," said she quickly, overriding him, "Okay, maybe not boyfriend but. . . you know, a crush or something?"

Sherlock's scowl became even darker, "A crush?"

"It's a person you like—"

"I know what a crush is, thank you very much," he spoke quickly.

"Good, so you. . . know what symptoms these are."

Sherlock simply shook his head unhelpfully. Molly had a hunch that the poor sod couldn't believe that he had a crush on anyone and had already excluded that "impossibility". She couldn't blame him. Even she couldn't really believe that Sherlock would have a crush on anyone, let alone him.

"Right," she massaged her forehead and propped her head with her fingers, "Doesn't look like you've had one ever, but I think. . . I might be wrong. . . but I think you have a crush on. . ." It was very disconcerting, the oblivious manner in which Sherlock was staring at her. She sighed as he patiently waited for more information. Finally, she pulled a long breath and closed her eyes, "IthinkyouhaveacrushonProfessorWatson."

He cocked his head to his left, staring at her like a lost puppy, "Sorry what?"

She cleared her throat, feeling extremely uncomfortable, "I think. . . you have a crush on. . . Professor Watson."

He blinked rapidly several times but otherwise, he didn't move or react. Molly braced herself for any kind of verbal assault she might face from him. None came, surprisingly, as he continued staring sightlessly at her, his mouth slightly open.

"Sherlock?" she called his name softly, but to no avail. His legs were still crossed. Finally his short-circuited brain started to reboot, and his eyes narrowed. He promptly stood up, brushing the non-existent dust off his jumper, "I think I'll give myself a dose of cardiac glycosides. They should do it perfectly," and before Molly could say anything at all, he was out of her house, just as silently as he came.

She sighed to herself, looking at her injured cat. In one night she had managed to offend her boyfriend, her best friend, and get her cat injured; last one was Sherlock's fault anyway. She walked off towards the bathroom, hoping for a decent shower, picking up the phone on the way.

"Mr. Holmes? This is Molly, erm. . . Sherlock is convinced that he has a heart disease, and he was talking about a dose of cardiac glycosides. . . now, I don't think he's sure about the dosage, but an overdose _can_  induce a coma, oh—no, I didn't mean—I. . ."

 

* * *

 

During the car ride next day, Sherlock wasn't speaking at all, or rather he was refusing to speak to her. Mycroft had waved them a perfectly sweet goodbye, the best way to start a day. Molly had to drive, and she couldn't bring Greg along, obviously.

In cell biology lecture in Professor Simpson's class, where Sherlock was sitting in with Molly only because he had a free hour and he desperately needed to listen to something that made sense to him, he sat with his elbows bent, forearms dangling carelessly off of the front of the edge of his desk. Molly felt very guilty. As much as calling Mycroft had been her duty, she knew how much Sherlock despised his brother coming to him and threatening him to drag him away to his family home.

"Sherlock?" Molly tried for the millionth time. No answer.

"You okay?"

"No," came a bored answer. Molly cheered up almost instantly.

"You. . . erm, did you manage to take those. . . glycosides—?"

"I've been thinking about what you told me, Molly," said he, not caring to listen to what she had to say. "Even though I am clearly a superior human being and. . . things like _racing heart_ , etc are symptoms that _ordinary people_ experience when they like someone, not I, I have still decided to entertain the possibility."

She stared at him appallingly for some seconds, "No."

"Yes!" Sherlock insisted, "I have double the intelligence of an average—"

"No," she maintained, "Sherlock, those symptoms are universal. They come as a subscription with being a human being. And secondly, the possibility of. . . what?"

"Of me having a crush on Professor Watson—"

"Shhh!" She tried to shush him. He had said that in his normal volume, but to Molly, it sounded a 100 times louder. Sherlock blinked, "What?"

"Can you keep it down please? No one should hear about this."

Sherlock assessed the reasons why it should be kept a secret. He found none, "Why?"

"Because," Molly fished in her head to come out with a proper explanation. For Sherlock, everything was a thesis supported by the pillars of reason. He didn't understand that some things were just supposed to. . . be. He was just too clueless about the most basic of instincts such as keeping their crushes private and stuff like that, ". . .because, he's your professor, Sherlock. . ."

"So? Is it wrong to like your professor?"

Molly bit the inside of her cheek, "So you admit that you do like him?"

His eyes narrowed, "Well, evidence points to it—"

"No!" She prayed to any deity who would listen to her to drill some EQ-istic sense into Sherlock, "For once, Sherlock, stop thinking about facts and evidence!" Molly vowed to wash her mouth with disinfectant as soon as she reached home, because the description that she was going to give was the closest but was also the most disgusting, "Do you feel. . . funny butterfly feelings in your stomach when you see him—?"

Yes, she was going to wash her mouth with disinfectant. She had never seen him more oblivious. . .

" _Funny butterfly feelings_?" He repeated, aghast.

"Have you never been attracted to _anyone_?" She asked incredulously. Sherlock clicked his pen on and off continuously; it was setting her on edge.

"Finding someone attractive and having a crush are two entirely different things, Molly," Sherlock snapped, and Molly cursed him inwardly for being so mealy-mouthed about it all.

"No," she shook her head.

"Of course it is!" Sherlock insisted, "For example, you find some of the seniors _hot_ ," and again, he said "hot" the way a child would say "butt", "but have you had crushes on everyone of them?"

"No," she insisted, "We're not playing this game, Sherlock. You always give people these long winded speeches that are peppered with insults meant to wind them up and distract them from what you're really saying. You can't pull that trick on me. This is about you. Don't make this about me."

"I was just proving a point!" Sherlock cried out, "At any rate, crushes are for children and girls, I'm an adult, for God's sake, I can't have crushes—!"

"Ms Hooper!" a voice called out her name. She straightened up in her chair almost instantly. Professor Simpson had seen them talking again and now, she and Sherlock were right in line with his firing line, "I suggest you move your things to the front bench here."

She risked a glance at Sherlock, hoping for an insult to come out of his mouth that would send the professor reeling back to the whiteboard. Regardless for her disapproval of the sometimes-bordering-on-rude punchlines, she relied on them for emergency rescue. But he stared ahead, just as blank as he had looked like a few moments ago. She took a deep breath as she moved away from him. The insults never came when she needed them to.

Sherlock crossed his arms and slumped back in his chair when Molly moved her things to the beloved front bench. Simpson threw him a death glare saying _I will do horrible things to you in the examination_. Sherlock wanted to shout out loud that he wasn't in St. Bart's to get a degree. He was here because it was closest to his flat and it didn't matter to him whether he passed or failed because all he cared about was the knowledge he got.

"I bet you won't be able to tell me what I was teaching a few minutes ago, Ms Hooper," Simpson looked at her with distaste, "Stay with Holmes, " at this point, Sherlock's ears perked up, "and you'll end up failing every subject."

Sherlock wanted to point out that Molly was a good, consistent student, but he decided to keep quiet for her sake. He didn't want her to get into any more trouble.

Sherlock never really understood why the whole faculty of science (at least the ones who knew them) were so keen on separating Molly and him. As if it wasn't enough that the whole university thought that Molly and he were a couple. And it wasn't like just because Sherlock had Molly's friendship, that automatically meant that she was his follower. For instance, she was never willing to go to the mortuary when Sherlock invited her to. Most of them seemed to think that if Molly did not stick with Sherlock, they'd have had it straightaway with him in a couple of hours' time, professors and students alike, and especially the ones like Simpson.

Sherlock couldn't count on his single hand the number of times Molly (and not he) was called to the Dean's and the HoD's office and tried to be spoon-fed conspiracy theories about how Sherlock tried to undermine her genius by distracting her from her studies, making Sherlock look like the bad cop there.

As always, even if they tried their best, Molly was surprisingly stubborn in their attempts to break through their friendship. Sherlock sometimes wondered if Molly secretly liked him as something more than a friend, because nobody could be that blind loyal to anyone.

No, Sherlock thought. He could never miss something as obvious as that. Molly was terribly clumsy when it came to secrets.

Molly bent her head downwards, choosing to say nothing, because it would just anger Simpson more. Sherlock simply hoped that he take the spotlight away from her. Molly wasn't comfortable in situations like these.

"Well?" Simpson demanded, "If you think that someone," and at this point, he directly looked at Sherlock, "isn't spoiling you with their company, tell me what I had been teaching."

Before Molly could stammer truthfully that she didn't know, which Sherlock doubted that she _really_ didn't know, Sherlock called out in a last attempt to save her, "About mitochondria, sir. Unlike others, we do know how to use more than one sensory organ, _sir_."

Simpson clenched his teeth angrily, while trying to ignore Sherlock so that he could make Molly understand how much time and effort she wasted hanging out with Sherlock, "I'm sure you know what mitochondria is, you must've learnt that in your year nine. Let's hear from you what mitochondria is."

Simpson popped a pill into his mouth that was a general prescription for high blood pressure. Sherlock felt sadistically glad upon seeing that Simpson had had his comeback for trying to suspend him.

"Or-organelle which generates p-power, sir," she stammered. Simpson took his thickset spectacles off on his desk.

"Kindly elaborate."

Sherlock tried to make his expression as disapproving as possible as poor Molly stammered like a broken induction motor, "Organelle responsible for energy production of the cell, sir. If cell were a building, mitochondria would be the power generator—"

To his surprise, Simpson looked utterly shocked. " _Power generator_? Ms. Hooper, if I asked you this question in exam, is _this_ the answer you'd write? Compare human cell to a building?!"

Sherlock frowned. Molly was conceptually right, and stupid Simpson still had a problem. He was talking it all out on her, all his anger at Sherlock. Moreover, no professor would bother to ask them what a mitochondria was. Even year nines weren't asked that in their biology exam.

"But I—" Molly frowned and gave a short nervous laugh, "I was right—"

Simpson ignored her and looked around in the class. A hand shot up in the air, as if in expectation. Sherlock rolled his eyes and exhaled an all-suffering sigh inwardly. Pathetically predictable Wood. Again.

"Yes?"

Wood, who somehow conned people into accepting his friendship with the help of some sort of African voodoo, was fiercely jealous of Sherlock's academic prowess. He stood up, his pale, distasteful features lighting up with smugness. Sherlock wanted to point it out that there was no need to be smug where Simpson knew Molly's name and hadn't even bothered to memorise Anderson's yet.

"Mitochondria, singular mitochondrion," and Sherlock's eyes went wide at the fact that Wood had to point it out, "is a double-membranous organelle found in most eukaryotic cells containing enzymes for respiration and energy production. Mitochondria are the power supply for the body. They produce energy compounds, the energy currency of the cell called ATP, Adenosine Triphosphate, that assist the body in completing the tasks it must in order to function properly. A mitochondrion has two sets of membranes—"

"Redundant," Sherlock called out loudly, trying to take away the attention of the class from Wood and towards himself, if only it would save Molly. He could deal with Simpson later, but he was not sure if she could, "You already mentioned that."

"—with an intermembranous space inside called the matrix," Wood continued, undeterred, "which is bordered by the inner membrane folds or tubules called the cristae. The mitochondria are the principal energy source of the cell. They not only convert nutrients into energy but also perform many other specialized tasks. Each mitochondrion has a chromosome that is made of DNA but is otherwise quite different from the better-known chromosomes in the nucleus. The mitochondrial chromosome is much smaller than other chromosomes. It is round, whereas the chromosomes in the nucleus are shaped like rods—"

"Thank you very much, Mr. Wood," Simpson drawled; the corner of his mouth twitched upwards in a pleased smirk. The entire batch of students, Sherlock and Molly included, stared at him as if he were some alien. Wood was asked what a mitochondria was, and he had drifted off to what was there inside it. That pleased the professor?

Please!

" _That_ is called an answer, Ms. Hooper," Simpson clapped, and the rest of the students followed suit with the exception of Sherlock and a very dazed Molly. Wood looked pleased beyond comprehension, "and not your parallelisms between the cell and a building, geddit? If all you want to do is waste your time and energy with Mr. Holmes, I suggest you leave my class."

Sherlock bit the insides of his cheeks in annoyance as Molly trembled from head to foot. Right, Wood gets a standing ovation for showing off at the cost of Molly, Sherlock thought, and he always gets a punch in the face? Not fair.

"But-but sir," she protested weakly, "I said the same thing. . . in simple language—"

"You can go back to Sixth Form if you prefer simple language, Ms. Hooper. Not in my class."

"N-no. . . I'm-I'm sorry, sir—"

"I'm not interested in wasting my time, Ms. Hooper. If you don't leave my class now, I'll make sure that this class doesn't have another lecturer for the entire duration of this term."

"Sir, please—"

"In simple language—Out!"

Sherlock was about to howl in protest as all the students looked at Molly imploringly, asking her to leave at once. No one could afford Professor Simpson to be cross over a student who was simply talking in class. Molly was so upset that she left without her books, without even a look at Sherlock.

Simpson turned around without a change in his expression and went back to whatever he was writing on the whiteboard. Wordlessly, Sherlock gathered his own books and walked to where Molly had been sitting, slouched shoulders, vision at the floor. He knew that everyone was gaping at him as he gathered Molly's things quietly and started walking out of the lecture theatre.

"Very well, Mr. Holmes," The professor's voice cracked like a whip behind too as he continued writing something on the board, "I wish every time could be as easy as _that._ "

Sherlock sucked in a breath in order to teach the goddamned professor a lesson, and out came the monologue.

"Molly left instruments that record, analyze, summarize, organize debate and explain information; that are illustrated, non-illustrated hard-bound, paperback, jacketed, non jacketed with foreword, introduction, table-of-contents, index that are intended for the enlightenment, understanding, enrichment, enhancement and education of the human brain through the sensory route of vision, sometimes touch too. I'm just returning them."

Simpson looked like someone had just fried his brains, "What're you saying?"

"Books, sir," he tried to suppress a smirk as he referred faux-innocently at Molly's bookbag, "She forgot her books, _sir_. I thought you might appreciate this language, seeing as you don't understand the simplicity of the language of humans."

And with that, Sherlock promptly ran away before the professor could say anything to him.

 

* * *

 

"Molly!" Sherlock called, just as he reached the courtyard separating Block 1 and Block 3 of UG Science Building. He hurried after her. He could feel distress radiating from her small, slouching figure as she walked away towards the cafeteria halfway between the path separating the PG Science from UG Science.

"Molly!" He called out again and broke into a run, trying to come across as cheerful even if it hurt his cheeks. He had read somewhere that man tended to copy actions like monkeys did. Extending that logic, if he was cheerful, even Molly might forget what happened in Professor Simpson's class.

Somehow, he doubted that. Trying to put on such charades was tiresome, but for Molly, it was alright.

When he reached her and touched her on the shoulder, she turned to face him. Her face was red with the embarrassment. He was just thankful that she wasn't crying, even though she didn't cry all that much. It always got awkward with another crying participant. He had had similar situations with his mother, "Sherlock?"

"Yeah, I skipped it," he said simply and handed her her bookbag. "At any rate, it was boring."

Molly looked up at him, all brown stubborn eyes, tired dark circles under them, "It's not funny this time, Sherlock."

"I didn't say that," Sherlock dropped all charade of cheerfulness, "Are you alright?

Molly looked away, avoiding his eyes, "Why won't I be alright?"

"You should not be alright at this point," he confessed, "I mean, you usually find that emotionally crippling or something like that."

She let out a short incredulous laugh, "Thanks anyway, I s'pose. For the bookbag—"

"You're making—"

"I'm tired, Sherlock," she brushed back a rogue strand of hair, "I'm tired of this."

Sherlock didn't respond. Molly was tired of him. Her words did nothing to mollify the meaning.

"I sound like an idiot," she shook her head and sighed when Sherlock continued looking blank, "Anyway, it's already recess. I'm getting some crisps at the cafeteria. You want some?"

"Erm. . ." Sherlock frowned. He really wasn't very hungry, but before he could say that he would. . . like some, Molly replied, "It's alright, I know you don't."

It was awkward, more awkward than distressing. Molly simply pursed her lips and then just stared at something behind him. Sherlock narrowed his eyes, and turned to see Dr. Watson sitting all alone in the shade in the cafeteria, looking at someplace like he was avoiding him, more like it. Sherlock instantly turned back around. Molly's mood had improved dramatically.

"Someone's checking you out," she said, looking away to hide the smile that was creeping into her face. Sherlock rolled his eyes but otherwise didn't reply.

Although the lines under her eyes were a bit tired, her face had lit up wondrously, "Oh, Sherlock. You _are_ ridiculous. Everything with you is ridiculous."

"Oh, _thank you_ ," he said sarcastically. "May I go now?"

She snorted, "There's actually a good seat in the cafeteria from where you can see everyone without them knowing. . ."

 

* * *

 

John watched Holmes talking with his girlfriend there in front of UG Sciences building. She looked tired. His smile faded away as she kept saying something that John couldn't hear. He tried to wonder what.

There was a distinct lack of intimacy in the couple, he thought. Even though Holmes and that girl always sat together, were always seen together with the exception of the free hour after the Monday class, looked always a little too close in class, he had never really seen them kiss or even hold hands. John knew about the major couples within the students that he taught, but Holmes and that girl were not like that. Not at all. Maybe they didn't like PDA. . . but then there was a distinct lack of chemistry between them even though they were one of the most famous couples around the department. Other professors would have to be blind to not be able to see that.

He preferred to sit alone today. He had meant to hunt Holmes down today, ask him what had happened to his _I'm-suspended_ drama. Although he _was_ roaming around the campus like a free bird, so John simply assumed that he had somehow swung it. John could only imagine the face of the Dean of Students staring down at the finger with Simpson's signature on it. That's why Abbott had said that Simpson's mood was really bad for the past couple of days.

Soon, the girl's eyes wandered and settled on John. John averted his eyes at once when he felt that Holmes was starting to turn around. Under the table, his thigh gave a nervous twitch as he looked away, pretending to be interested in the beetle trying to make its way into the cafeteria through the glass.

When he glanced at Sherlock for the second time, he had turned back and this time, that girl was smiling. Her mood had lifted almost visibly. John's heart quickened its pace. Had they noticed him?

Soon enough, the girl seemed to go away, a little smile on her face. She was headed for the cafeteria,  he realised. Holmes stared after her for some time, longer than deemed normal. No time better than now, John thought and got up before the girl saw him exiting the cafeteria without finishing his sandwich.

John made his way out through the other door after patting Abbott on the back and made a beeline for where Holmes had been standing. Thank goodness he was still standing there, albeit a little awkwardly, as if he had no idea where to go next.

"Mr. Holmes," John greeted him a curt greeting instead of a "hello" when he reached him. Holmes turned around and his eyes tracked John's strides, his shoes and finally his shirt. John was aware of a coffee stain on it and was tempted to hide it from him. Holmes straightened up  his back and tucked his arms behind his back, making John feel like a midget in front of him. He put on a smile that was somewhat stern around the edges but otherwise polite.

"Hello then, professor," he drawled, his signature smirk playing on his lips, "what brings you here on such a fine Monday afternoon?"

John blinked and stared at him stubbornly, "I see you're not suspended anymore. Swung that trick, didn't you?"

The laughter that bubbled up Sherlock's throat shook his entire frame, "What are you going to do about it? Tell Simpson?"

John was aware of a couple of black, rectangular eyes in his direction. He turned around and saw none, but he couldn't shake off the feeling that someone was watching. And what was wrong in that, he didn't know. Outwardly, he and Holmes could be having a conversation on mammalian histology

"Let's talk about this in my. . . office, perhaps?"

Holmes cocked his eyebrow. John felt like he was crossing some imaginary line. Holmes wouldn't like that. He'd say no, of course he'd say no. He'd refuse in a heartbeat. If John was in his place, he'd obviously have made some excuse to leave. Why would one want to go with a professor for a talk when he. . .

"Oh please," Sherlock rolled his eyes and snorted, throwing John's offer right on his face, "I know this excuse. You'll just drag me to Simpson, proclaim something absurd and have me suspended again. It's too old a trick, professor."

John tried not to frown. Why would he do that? Holmes wasn't a bad kid; okay, he was a little weird but strangely charming too. There was a certain charisma to him.

"So paranoid but no," he shook his head, "I didn't say that. My office is in PG Sciences, Dr. Simpson's is in the other building."

Sherlock watched him with an unreadable expression. John stared back at him stubbornly, not willing to back down at all as Sherlock assessed him with his usual X-Raying gaze. He shifted his weight from one foot to other awkwardly.

Sherlock relaxed, and his eyes softened when he blinked, "Lead the way." John too blinked away the restlessness and nodded sharply. He felt incredibly conscious of Sherlock tottering behind him as they walked not-together to John's office. He kept his ears out, listening to Sherlock's footsteps, the way he swayed from the path to peep into other classrooms, labs etc until they stopped.

John's office was obviously smaller than what Simpson's was, a much more modest nameplate on the door, blinds drawn up, smaller desk. John opened the door and strode in. He glanced at Holmes who was watching his office with a markedly calculating expression, his eyes roaming around, darting from one corner to another. John cleared his throat.

"Take a seat, Sherlock."

Holmes finished with looking around and made himself comfortable on one of the chairs. John switched the airconditioning on and settled behind the desk. Sherlock was eyeing the desk, playing with a paper weight nonchalantly, "So, what did you want to talk about? About why was I almost suspended?"

John gave a short incredulous laugh. "Sort of, yeah. You—?"

"You had to invite me to your office for that?" Holmes asked, cocking an eyebrow, "it's a short story which involves idiots on both sides, that's all you need to know."

John sighed. Really, he could've had that conversation with Holmes anywhere. He really hadn't needed to call him into the privacy of his office. Certainly not to deal with that kind of attitude.

"You should really change that attitude," he pointed out, pulling his glasses off and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "You'll need to be more diplomatic, handling other adults when you leave this place."

Holmes was still slumped in his chair, his lips curling, " _Diplomatic_?! I don't see _you_ being very diplomatic with me."

John opened his mouth to answer and then closed it, before he thought up another set of words, "And mature too. Thinking that you can get out of suspension like that isn't very mature."

Holmes' eyes narrowed. John was unable to process the colour of them, so busy he was trying to think of what he might say next, "Boy, you're really curious, aren't you?"

John cleared his throat, "Curious isn't the word I'd choose. Wary. . . maybe yeah, because I need to prepare myself against anything you might try out," he replied with a smirk. Holmes crossed his arms over his chest and sunk lower into his chair.

"Good to know that someone's working hard to please me," he gave him a lopsided grin which faded away real quick. John raised his eyebrows at that comment.

"You think so?" John countered back. The grin changed into a lazy smile as he chuckled and watched John. He just kept staring at John all the time. He wasn't sure what to make of it.

"I believe so. . . Hmph. Well, I'll appease your curiosity, sir," Holmes straightened up in his chair. "Complicated story, no subtitles, peers played a prank, Simpson caught us, tried to suspend me for being drunk while on the campus. No big deal."

"You _were_ drunk," John pointed out. "I smelled alcohol on you that day."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "I despise alcohol. Did you miss the part where I said that it was a prank? It was no big deal. I tried to tell Simpson, but he just began manipulating Molly into expelling me; again long story, no subtitles. I taught him a lesson for even trying that."

John smirked a little, committing that little piece of information about Holmes hating alcohol to his mind. There was something incredibly awe-inspiring and gleeful seeing Holmes challenging his boss, "You really pissed him off. "

Sherlock sighed, "He's popping BP pills because of me," he drawled, "I couldn't be any more glad."

John shook his head resignedly. Silence fell around them, somewhat like it did when they were there in the class after Monday. John felt his pulse spike in anticipation when he thought that today, he'd spend an hour with Holmes after class. Holmes took to staring at the cabinet to his left; John took to staring at the window towards his right. Birds flew in the sky, the windmill atop the Electrical Engineering building spun faster than John had ever seen it to be. He glanced at Holmes, the taut pale skin over his collarbones peeking out of the grey shirt.

He took the paper weight that Holmes had previously taken and traced circles over it. His watch beeped the alarm, signalling the end of the lunch break and startling John from his reverie. Holmes heard and noticed that; John could tell that he did, but he didn't budge from his place. He had to go, as did John.

"Alright," John nodded and stood up suddenly, unconsciously hoping to startle Holmes too but his expression showed no such thing, "I'll see you in class."

Holmes smirked, "You surely will."

With that, he swept his gaze up and down John and turned away towards the door, dragging his jeans up to his slim waist clumsily. John eyed his figure, watching him go out when a question suddenly accosted him, one he needed answered.

"Holmes!" He called. Holmes turned around to face him, his face blank.

"Yes?"

John approached him cautiously, running his tongue over his bottom lip, "Why. . . did you say that my plans weren't going to go well?"

Sherlock smirked, "Did they not go well?"

He felt the corner of his lip curling upwards on its own accord. They had. Immensely so. He hadn't expected him and Jeanette to move so fast, "That was not my question. Why would you say that at all?"

"How else could I have convinced to wait and help me get my suspension letter back," Sherlock winked, "at any rate, that didn't work, I suppose." He shrugged, "See you in class then, professor. Don't be late."

With that, Holmes was out of sight, leaving John blinking bemusedly. He stood there for a long time, and then grabbed his bookbag and followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm almost always eventually right- Dr. Gregory House, _House_


	5. Chapter 5

"We need to be careful from now on."

Sherlock gave a nod, his eyes still focussed on his phone. There was something very secretly challenging about arcade games, but he thought that it would be best not to voice that aloud, "Yes we do."

"No one should come to know about this."

"I understand."

"Someone already knows about this, don't they?"

". . . Yup."

A tired sigh. "You can't screw around all day."

"I _don't_. And I hope you won't too."

"I _never_ do. We can't allow for any slip-ups now," Molly shook her head and muttered under her breath. "It's not been even a month into this term and you and I were almost rusticated from here. If anyone comes to know about that, they'll be motivated to try even better."

Sherlock looked up at the board when someone cleared their throat. Professor Watson was looking very pointedly at him from over the tops of his glasses, the sort of gaze which said _pay attention to what I'm saying_.

"You better pay attention to me, Sherlock," Molly's unwelcome voice interrupted his thoughts again, "I'm not going to butcher the foundation of my entire career to your daydreaming. I will kick you out of my car."

"Shut up. There's enough stupidity in this room," he snapped. "Don't add to it."

She seethed angrily, "Fine. You can walk home today."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. He had heard that threat many times. It was never for real.

Till of late, Sherlock always deemed gallery type classrooms as the bane for students like him. It was only fortunate that his professors mostly kept him out of their classes than in so that they didn't feel demoralised by how little attention he actually paid to them.

Now he couldn't say the same. From there, he got the uninterrupted view of his anatomy professor, no unwelcome heads or hands as obstacles to his vision. Something inside him ached to go and sit in the front bench instead, but that was against his nature.

Sherlock went back to staring at the board after voting a 'no' to throwing a smirk to his professor. He had seen his office today. Not because he was in trouble or because he was going to be told off, but because it was about something that Dr. Watson wanted to talk about. he didn't want to come across as grateful and, God forbid, elated at that.

Sherlock had been so surprised and so shocked when Dr. Watson had asked him that, like _no-way-he-couldn't-have-asked-me-what-he-just-asked-me_ shocked. He had taken up every opportunity to try and label away how he felt when the door first opened to him. It was something that automatically tipped the corner of his lips upwards. He wanted to memorise every detail, store it away in his brain but the way he felt when he entered it for the first time was so _exquisite_ that he decided that he would want to feel like it every time John Watson invited him into his office.

"What did he say?" Molly whispered to him. Sherlock turned to her, all wide eyes and frowns.

"Who?"

Molly smirked. Getting Sherlock's attention was harder than getting the attention of a one-year old who did not understand English, "Your crush-sweetie, of course!"

Sherlock inwardly cringed at that. Molly using sugary terms for the simplest of things was appalling even at the best of times, "Stop calling him my _crush_!"

"I thought you liked him."

"That doesn't make him my crush!"

"So you _do_ like him," Molly bit her lip.

An all-suffering sigh. Molly was finding this extremely funny. Sherlock wanted to tell her that it was not funny. He hadn't laughed when she told him that Gavin had asked her out, but that was mostly because he had been uninterested, "What do you want?"

"I saw him whisking you away to the other building today," Molly said, alternating between looking at Sherlock and looking at the board.

Sherlock pretended to hear nothing. Molly was wasting his precious time trying to make him listen where he could watch John Watson without the other coming to know about it. After some minutes, she became mum about the whole thing.

It had been more than a week since Sherlock admitted to himself that what he had been subconsciously brewing in himself was more than just simple attraction and curiosity. There was more to this. 'Liking' didn't even come close, 'liking' sounded like primary school boy language. Yes, John Watson was likeable, of course he was, much more likeable than a professor should be allowed to be. All the students in his class seemed to 'like' him, his class had a fairly less bunking percentage than some others.

"As I was saying," Dr. Watson droned on in one breath as his watch beeped the completion of the duration of the lecture, "this assignment does add to your GPA, folks. So do me a favour and submit it by this Thursday so that you know how much you need to study for to pass this internals, alright? Dismissed."

Sherlock smiled briefly at that, at the speed and urgency with which he said those words. Someone was keen.

One by one, the whole classroom emptied until he was the only one remained sitting in the last bench and Dr. Watson heaved a sigh that sounded like relief. Sherlock felt his jaw almost trembling to keep the laugh in. He wasn't the only one who was in anticipation of this, whatever this was.

"In a hurry, are you, professor?" Sherlock drawled as he climbed over the desks and settled in the front bench. He licked his lips and smirked as Dr. Watson stared open-mouthed at him.

"Sorry what?"

"Quite a speech, that one. Came to class seven minutes late and dismissed it ten minutes earlier. No wonder students _like_ you so much."

It took two seconds and a blink for Dr. Watson to react to his words and not his innuendo, "Oh yes, I have a lot of work to do. . ." he gestured to his desk which turned out to be blissfully empty, ". . . which, as it turns out, is done."

"Evidently," was all Sherlock could say as the professor smiled kindly at him. There was something about him, about Dr. John Watson. There was a tenderness to him that wasn't there in most professors. He wasn't as sharp-tongued as his colleagues. He went to extreme lengths to ensure that everyone was comfortable with what he taught. Unlike other professors, who didn't give a shit about whether students understood them or not, as long as they were getting their stipends and getting their papers published. Sherlock knew how hard it could be. The institution's name depended more on the reputation of its instructors and professors than the student alumni. If one spend too much time being likeable with their students, they tended to miss out on the calibre of their research.

"You were quiet today," Dr. Watson spoke as he sipped coffee from a takeaway cup and plopped down on Sherlock's desk.

"You were not very boring today, sir."

"Oh," he laughed. The sound was vaguely pleasant, "I didn't realise that that was even possible."

"Now you do," he simpered as he took in Dr. Watson's relaxed position. That bloody mouth was open again. "Is there something you wanted to talk about? Again?"

Dr. Watson watched him tetchily for a few seconds and then got up, picking lint off his shirt, "Uh no, just. . . wanted to. . . know whether you knew the syllabus for this internals, seeing as you don't pay attention at all."

"I'm fine, thank you," Sherlock drawled, knowing that that wasn't what the professor meant at all, "what's your point?"

Dr. Watson smiled in disbelief. "What point? There's no point."

"The one you're dawdling around," Sherlock crossed his arms and leant back in his chair, looking up into the deep blue of Dr. Watson's eyes, "the one you feel will _offend_ me."

Dr. Watson shook his head, " _This_ is the point. People don't appreciate this attitude, Sherlock. Yes, you might be intelligent and all, but you shouldn't say things the way that can make others feel persecuted."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, despite the graceless sinking feeling that he had disappointed Dr. Watson, "Are you saying that I make you feel persecuted, _sir_?"

"What you make me feel isn't important. I'm your professor and I'm supposed to guide you—"

"You're my anatomy professor," Sherlock corrected, "you're supposed to "guide" me in anatomy, not in philosophy, which I don't require, by the way."

Dr. Watson sighed and took his glasses off, "Well then, if you think you have such a grasp on the material maybe you could start helping me plan lectures."

Sherlock frowned. For the second time that day, Dr. Watson couldn't have possibly asked him what he was asking him. "You want me. To help you."

"That's right. At the very least, having some of your ideas up here might help you pay attention and keep that attitude in your own pocket. And I can focus more on my own work."

Sherlock considered that. Dr. Watson looked serious enough, because that would've been any other teacher's idea of a lame insult, "And what do you get out of that?"

"Peace of mind?" he said with a smirk.

"That's it?"

"That's up to you," John cleared his throat and settled behind his desk comfortably, "the decision is yours."

Sherlock thought it over. Dr. Watson was offering himself up on a plate. He was literally giving him an opportunity to spend some _time_ with him. He wasn't going to be the one to turn him down.

"Fine with me," he shrugged, trying to come across as anything but exuding happiness that had no sense of grace or humility. "Maybe you'll get to learn something from me after all, professor."

Dr. Watson broke into giggles that weren't appropriate for a teacher at all, "yeah right. Let's get back to work, please."

Sherlock exhaled a heavy breath, watching the professor throw him one last look before going to retrieve his phone. He had never talked to him for this long. Three minutes twenty five seconds, he thought victoriously.

"So," he waited till John looked up, "what entails _working_ with you, professor?"

Dr. Watson smiled a polite smile that did not reach his eyes, "Keeping your comments to yourself, for starters? In _our_ lesson plan, so to speak, discipline is of utmost—"

"Boring," Sherlock exclaimed loudly, slouching in his chair. God, the man was blind. Or deaf. Or both. He'd have to be more direct with him instead of hinting at innuendos.

"Is it?" Dr. Watson glared at him, "you find my lectures boring?"

Sherlock bit his tongue. They were actually. But the way Dr. Watson taught them was fascinating, to say the least. Not academically or even technique-cally. But everything-else-wise-cally. Like the-pinkness-of-the-scrap-of-his-tongue-peeking-out-to-lick-his-bottom-lip-cally. Like the-way-his-chest-expanded-when-he-took-a-deep-breath-to-calm-himself-after-Sherlock-finished-with-his-monolougue-cally.

He shook himself inwardly. He could only imagine Dr. Watson's face if ever came to know that that was how Sherlock treated him in his thoughts. The hard look on his face, tutting down at Sherlock with grave translucent blue eyes instead of the usual deep blue glaring over the tops of his specs. The following declaration that he wasn't gay, the words reverberating through the twitching in his hard-set lower jaw.

"I find every lecture boring, professor," he said, lip curling. He knew the man's need for appreciation. He thrived on praise from people like Simpson, people who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as him.

"If you don't want to be here—"

"I have to be here," Sherlock said truthfully.

Dr. Watson sighed; he seemed to regard him with something that was neither admiration or dismay like he usually did; perhaps closer to exasperation, like he should've known better after having spent five free hours with him. He buried himself into his papers again, shaking his head and murmuring something too incoherent for Sherlock to understand. Sherlock threw him a last look, gazing at Dr. Watson's phone which kept buzzing but he didn't pick it up.

"My next lecture is on carpal tunnels," Dr. Watson said without looking up, lips thinning and whitening upon being captured by the press of the lower teeth, "surely you know that."

Sherlock yawned, "I know now."

There was a moment of tense silence after which came the voice, soft and angry and yet patient, "Look, I know you consider everyone and everything beneath you but you don't have to say things which repeatedly remind someone that—"

Sherlock scoffed at that, "You misunderstand me, professor. You mistake my indifference for a misplaced sense of arrogance."

Dr. Watson threw him a smirk that waned into exasperation along the edges, "That's a lot of _mis_ words you've got there. . . Alright then, come on," he motioned to Sherlock to come sit near him, "let's get going."

"Going about what?"

"Our _combined_ lesson plan. We talked about it, yeah? If you're really so philanthropic, this might be a good chance to prove it."

Sherlock pouted, but he ultimately dragged his chair over to the professor. Actually helping Dr. Watson to plan his lectures had been the last thing on Sherlock's mind, but it was welcome nonetheless, if not with as much gusto as for what he had actually thought: that the "lesson plan" was just a flimsy pretext to get together during free hours, and not the literal thing. This man was really hard to tell, Sherlock thought with a sigh. As he came closer, he couldn't help but notice how even Dr. Watson moved closer to the edge of the desk, "Alright, sir."

"Good," he nodded and exhaled slowly, "let's get on with it then."

Sherlock plopped down on his chair, stretching his legs to the fullest. He cleared his throat louder than required when he felt Dr. Watson's eyes on him for too long. The poor man was probably self-conscious about his own height.

"Ahem yes," Dr. Watson looked away and dived into his pile of books hurriedly without bothering to put on his reading glasses, "Sorry, I was. . . distracted. . . You've got long legs," he finished lamely, "like an athelte's."

"No worries, professor," Sherlock simpered. There was a sort of a wicked pleasure in making Dr. Watson uncomfortable, "Carry on."

"Thank you, I will. You don't have to keep doing that."

Sherlock tried not to laugh, "Doing what?"

Dr. Watson looked at him with sharp irritated eyes, "I swear you're a sadist."

"Apologies," he uttered, not meaning it at all, "but I didn't get you."

He gave him an entirely humourless smile, shaking his head slowly and letting out an exhale. "Never mind. Let's," he waved vaguely towards an anatomy atlas, "you have a better judgment of the aptitude of your fellow classmates than I do, it's better if you point out to me what I—"

"Oh yes, I do," Sherlock cut across him smoothly, "they're all idiots."

"They're not," John insisted sternly, to Sherlock's amusement, "Okay, let's go by your. . . the girl who sits with your, her level. Point out to me what she might not know, and I'll skip unimportant portions accordingly. Christ, these people are really unresponsive when I ask them whether I need to repeat something."

"Like I said, they're idiots. They're embarrassed to admit that they need you to repeat things for them. You'll _have_ to take extra classes to do even unimportant portions for them."

Dr. Watson looked at him suspiciously. Sherlock knew he hadn't given himself away at that. He had so many free hours to give to poor Dr. Watson. He could just imagine the wonder of having that man droning on for two hours during the tedious Wednesday afternoon.

"Do I?"

Sherlock shrugged and looked away, "Just saying. Up to you, sir."

"Hmm," he nodded preoccupied-ly, sorting through various papers and setting two heavy textbooks right in front of a surprised Sherlock, "Let's get back to work please."

Sherlock sighed. He hadn't signed up for this. Seeing that these were books he had never read, he resigned himself to the task. For fifteen minutes they worked in silence, their arms never touching even though with their proximity, they ought to—at least more than five times, Sherlock estimated. The stillness hung over them, overbearing in its presence, punctuated with only the whirring of pens and turning of pages. Sherlock thought, why not be sincere for Dr. Watson at least once, and started trying to think like a primary school boy to mark whatever he didn't know and added notes accordingly. Turned out, it wasn't easy.

"So. . ." Sherlock bolted upwards at the sound. Someone couldn't take it anymore, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Sherlock snorted, closing his textbook resolutely, " _When I grow up_?! Do I look like a five-year-old—?"

"Well, you _behave_ like a five-year-old," he said with a small smirk. "Don't blame me."

Sherlock nodded, sighing exasperatedly. That was true anyway. He took a pencil and began to draw small circles on Dr. Watson's notebook, just because he could. The latter didn't say anything, just kept his eyes on Sherlock's fingers flexing and contracting as he began tracing over an overlarge infinity symbol. The silence was paradoxically ringing in his head like a siren, his blood surging in his ears, Dr. Watson's breath too audible, the scent of mild deodorant on his body obvious. His shoulder muscles sang in tension at the awkward angle he had kept his right arm. Sherlock did not dare look anywhere else, afraid that any movement and he'd cease feeling the way he felt.

He didn't dare to move anywhere, neither closer nor farther. He only kept darkening the infinity symbol over and over again. Why, he didn't know. He did not dare look up at Dr. Watson. . . John. It was like he knew somewhere deep inside that he had John's attention. But some stupid, insecure part of him wanted to look up, to be really, _really_ sure.

Should he stop? Should he keep going on? Should he. . .?

A digital beep echoed in the walls of the lecture room, startling Dr. Watson from his reverie, if the little jerk of the desk was anything to go by. Fifteen minutes went by like nothing. Sherlock did not react. He merely kept the pencil down and straightened up in his chair slowly, as slowly as possible, while still trying to keep the fragility in him like a paper boat floating on glass of water full to the brim, like if he moved, something in him would fall down and spill into waste. He had never allowed weakness in him—why should he—however good it felt. This tore him to bits and left him unable to think of anything else than preserving this, whatever it was.

He knew the beep. It was Dr. Watson's watch. Signalling that the hour was over, he thought with a sinking feeling.

"Hour's over," came Dr. Watson's hoarse voice. There was some satisfaction, listening to it. Sherlock tried not to look into his eyes, as much as he wanted to and feel the restlessness in himself taking a rather alarming magnitude. The feeling was so intense and fragile at the same time that it was almost scary.

"Yes, I must get going," he kicked the chair away lazily, regaining his former self effortlessly, "I did like our little "lecture planning" session," he said with a wink. Dr. Watson's brows furrowed at the air quotes.

"What do you mean by "lecture planning"?"

"You know, where you asked me what I'd like to do when I'd _grow up_. What did you expect me to say?" Sherlock said sarcastically, "Prime Minister? Astronaut? Wayne Maradona?!"

"It was a simple question," he cleared his throat gingerly, frowning a bit at 'Wayne Maradona'.

"Oh, I didn't realise our lesson plan included my ambitions and future plans."

Dr. Watson rolled his eyes, very uncharacteristic for a man his age, Sherlock thought as he heard the pitter-patter of annoying intrusive feet outside the door. He wore his glasses back, "Get out of here."

When Sherlock ascertained himself that Dr. Watson's tone was more of fond and exasperated rather than actually meaning it, he smirked, "Understood, sir."

 

* * *

 

When John finally dismissed Holmes upon hearing the tread of impatient feet outside his door, he finally dived towards his phone and groaned in his hands, careful not to let his class see him like that. Ten missed calls from Jeanette.

What the hell was wrong with her? She knew that, during this time, he'd be at university, teaching students. . . and then he remembered that he usually replied to her texts during this time of the day.

He had tried to ignore Holmes, his piercing eyes settling on him and watching, like he always did. It made John feel a weird sense of excitement, made him feel more than self-conscious, when he felt Holmes' eyes on him. He tried to do everything properly, tried not to mix or mince his words, tried to set an even breathing pattern and come across as more careless than he ever allowed himself to be. Holmes did that to him every time. John wanted to be at the pinnacle of perfection in front of him, for him. There was something odd and something else that felt horrible wrong about it.

Nonetheless, there was a bit of anticipation too.

John shook his head. He was going to go with his instincts. What he was doing and feeling fell along the spectrum of 'wrong'. As he watched Holmes walk away, as he noticed him pulling his jeans up his waist and revealing a patch of impossibly pearlescent skin that was visible to John, only to John and nobody else, he knew that something was wrong. Good or bad, he didn't know. Just that, it was wrong. He was in his workplace. He shouldn't feel like that. He had to work on his own work, maintain an acceptable balance between paperwork, teaching, reputation and Jeanette. Not to mention Harry.

". . . Sir? _Sir_?!"

John snapped out of his thoughts at the irritating voice calling him back to reality.

"Yes, what?" John snapped at the class in general.

There was a nervous round of tittering around the class. The offender raised his hand to draw John's attention to him, "About attendance, sir."

John cleared his throat, "Of course, yes. Sorry, erm—"

"We meant to say that we won't be giving attendance, sir."

John frowned and stopped in the middle of retrieving the attendance sheet from his file overflowing with papers. That was something he didn't get to hear. Usually students, especially the senior students fought like wolves to get their precious attendance registered, "What? Why?"

"We won't be, sir."

"Oh," John sighed exasperatedly. This was their whatever little form of protest against the dates for the internals, he understood, "This is about the test dates, isn't it? It's better than having the internals between your fests, guys. The pressure would be less."

"We're used to one kind of schedule over the years, sir. It's difficult adjusting to this."

John stood over to rub the board clean, ignoring the implied _you're new here, sir, you won't understand_. He couldn't see any logic to their little protest. It was better having the test earlier but he wasn't going to make them see his point of view. He remembered his uni times and how angry his friends got when a professor did something like that, "Well, unless any other order comes from the department, the dates will remain unchanged. Sorry, guys."

"Can't you put in a word, sir?" a brave one tried in a feeble voice.

John wanted to scoff at the idea. He was new, as his colleagues kept implying. It had been only a month and he was already beginning to side with the most infamous character in the university. Not a very good position to start with.

"Ah, not really. You can do that. . . But enough of that. Let's stick to anatomy. The later the test, more will be syllabus. The rest is up to you."

There was a vague murmur from the students, at which John only announced, "Are you guys sure about attendance thing?"

No one said anything this time. John gave a stiff nod and turned back to the board. His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he didn't care.

 

* * *

 

As soon as the class got over, John bolted out of the classroom, packing his things at record speed and leaving whatever little paperwork he had for tomorrow. The senior medical students had not given their attendance even after the class had ended and John had been stuck between trying to be professional and trying to be a mentor in not just anatomy, but life in general. After all, there were going to be a million things that one wasn't going to like about real life, but protesting wasn't going to be the answer every time, was it? And certainly not against something as trivial as the exam dates.

He glanced at his watch, and tried to not peek into room number B14, where Sherlock Holmes would be sitting in, being bored, of course, because he could be nothing but bored. He just walked on and on. Abbot got out by five. At the most five fifteen. John felt like he needed advice for something unknown and unspeakable that he was drifting into. He usually missed him and had to walk to the bus stand all alone on Mondays if he left the class on time. Today, he let the boys and girls go, seeing as the poor sods were on some sort of a silent attendance strike.

"Hey, Watson!" somebody clapped on his shoulder. John instinctively turned around. It was the man he was waiting for, albeit holding a takeout coffee.

"Christ, you startled me Abbott," he let out a sigh. There was something comforting about seeing Abbott's rotund domestic face among the other indifferent ones in St. Bart's.

"Guilty habit with me," he grinned, "class over today?"

"Yeah," he gave him a stiff nod, "Just walking back home. Mind if I join you?"

" _Mind if I join. . ._ Fancy language and all offending manners, eh?" Abbott snorted, and sometimes John wondered if he really was a senior teacher in the university, going by how he tried to come across as younger by altering his lingo to "careless", "A month with undergrads and you're speaking Holmesian now, are ya?"

John's spine sent out shivers at the mention of his name. He felt his body tingling to his fingertips. He looked up, seeing the leaves fall away from the half-naked tree as the autumn progressed with the advent of October. He pretended to himself that the chilly wind was heightening the colour in his cheeks.

"Well," he scratched the back of his neck with his fingernails. It was harder than he thought, when the time came for actually seeking guidance about Sherlock Holmes. He wasn't sure how to behave with that kid, whether to actually teach him or kick out, praise or shut up. Whether or not to progress into this unknown and foreign domain. He felt like he was crossing a line he ought not to, but he didn't see anything wrong with what they were doing, even though it _felt_ distinctly wrong. The entire thing was much more messy than John had wanted it to be. Holmes was, John had already begun to realise, going to be one of the best students John was ever going to have during the entire span of his career. It would be such a satisfaction in his later life, to know that a chap he had taught once upon a time was hoarding all the prizes of the world. Holmes could be an asset, to the country, to everyone he worked with.

John felt honoured, to put it in the crudest word available to man, to even be able talk to him. Even though he was his teacher and that he shouldn't feel this way. That he shouldn't be this grateful. Or curious. It might not be healthy.

All John knew was that what he was trying to think was just not all. He had an idea about what it was, of course, he wasn't an idiot. But it could be something else too, because it possibly couldn't be what it was.

"Well what?" Abbott pressed on. John seemed to be lost inside his thoughts far too often.

"Oh yeah, I—students, y'know."

Abbott smirked, "Not just students. A very specific student. You literally flinched when I took Holmes' name—"

"Yeah, about him," John cut across before Abbott could draw any conclusions about his mental state, "Why did you tell me never to let him in class?" He had a hunch that he had misconstrued what Abbott had meant to say. What if Holmes' way of entertainment was messing with his professors' minds, and that was what Abbott had been referring to during the first week? What if Holmes was playing a game with him, just because he wanted to be _not bored._

"Not _not let_ him in class," Abbott explained, "Be patient with that guy and he'll be okay. . . even comfortable with you."

Too comfortable, John thought dryly.

"I had him last year for advanced quantum mechanics," he continued merrily, and John tried not to lapse back into his thoughts. He had been embarrassed enough for the day as it was, "What brains, that one, my, my! I mean, he could be the next Baeyer or Mendeleev, y'know. Chap's got tremendous potential. Just one bad thing. . . he's arrogant, too arrogant, just imagine what he'd do with the power if he was made a fellow of the Royal Society and likes."

John thought about Sherlock's declaration about people mistaking his indifference for arrogance. There was a thin line of distinction between the two, something that was almost imperceptible. John pondered about just how many times people misunderstood Sherlock Holmes.

"So one day, I tell him one day, Holmes—you're to stay behind after class. And then I go into a full lecture of curbing that attitude, hardly proper for a future scholar and all. I try to tell him, even blackmail him with his girlfriend's name—what's her name again?"

John felt an unprecedented sinking feeling when Abbott mentioned Holmes' girlfriend. He had a girlfriend, and so did John, in a manner of speaking. It couldn't be what he was thinking, now he was sure of it. He made sure that he had a stony, slightly interested face when he said her name, "Hooper, I think."

"Right, Ms. Hooper. She's intelligent too, very studious. Anyway, I tell the chap, think about your girlfriend at least. She wants to study. And that proves to be the biggest mistake of my life."

"Oh, really?" John was now only vaguely interested in the narrative. Each syllable that Abbott uttered made him feel more and more guilty for having thought of Holmes like that.

"He questioned my ability as a teacher, that prick—pardon my French. Then he goes on to point out every wrong thing I said during the class, and declared that there would've been more had he been paying _attention_ ," he put on an accent that was nothing like Sherlock's. And then yes, my lectures are dull. 'Boring' is that guy's pet word, surely you know that by now?"

John nodded, thinking about how different Holmes' treatment was. But then, he had never really _asked_ him to stay behind. Holmes had volunteered. Holmes was anything but _that_ with him. He felt himself relaxing as the guilt slowly washed away. Perhaps he had been overthinking it.

"Yeah, sore with overuse."

Abbott chuckled softly, "Anyway, after a monologue that easy rivalled mine in length, he walked out in full dramatic fashion, and the next weeks were hell—he did that with you, didn't he?"

John couldn't help but feel the restlessness returning, the one he had learnt was a guarantee when Holmes was around, "Sort of, yeah."

Yeah, Holmes had done that, albeit with a wink and a smirk.

Abbott gave a sympathetic chuckle, "Made him stay after class, didn't you?"

John dipped his head into his chest, not saying further than what Abbott was thinking, "Biggest mistake, I second that."

"Fortunately for you, Watson, I know how to counter that. Ignore him for a week or two. He'll forget it eventually. I know he seems like a prick, but he really isn't that bad. Holmes is a good kid, y'know. If he was a bad kid, not even Ms. Hooper would've been able to put up with him."

"S'pose so," he said dubiously. Abbott noted his tone and smiled kindly.

"And what about the medical students? I heard that they were going on a strike or something."

"Yeah, attendance strike because they're having the exams before their fresher parties. Stupid sods."

"Bad, eh? We got more pressure now too, preparing three sets of MCQ papers per class within a week. God, I used to love those days when the tests were subjective. For hundred marks, you could get away with thirty questions, but now? Oh Christ!"

John gave a short laugh, "Same here. I kept procrastinating, personal issues came in the way. I couldn't really concentrate."

"Family?"

John sighed. Jeanette wasn't family, and it was just patch-up, not a "issue", "Sort of."

"Bird troubles?"

John shifted in his walking a bit, grimacing slightly. The one bad thing about Abbott was that he was a little too interfering, "Y. . . eah."

"Well, here's a bit of free advice. Be honest with them, and everything will work out. . . hopefully. Except if it is an affair, in which case it won't," he gave a short laugh. John gave an entirely false weak smile. Abbott was good for a chat, not too many.

"Then," John said, relieved, "see you tomorrow. My bus is here."

Abbott chuckled good-naturedly behind his back as John slipped inside and found a seat beside an old woman. What his colleague had said had somewhat made him feel a little bit relaxed, and a lot more worse. Even though he had been hoping that his strange. . . interactions, if he could call it that, with Holmes was only limited to strange and nothing more than that, now there was something which somehow resembled disappointment pooling in the pit of his stomach.

The moment Abbott had told him about how Holmes treated him after class, John had felt like something was soaring inside him, like the joy and wonder of being an exception to someone so impossible. All of it faded away at the mention of 'girlfriend'.

Was she his girlfriend? They looked intimate, but not intimate enough. Not for their age where they ought to be maudlin lovers, holding hands and all that silliness. But then, Holmes was anything but that, if one had to go by intuition.

His empty flat was never a sight too welcome. John set down his bookbag and ran his hands over his eyes, his shoulders aching with tiredness after having stood for five hours, having grabbed a little more than only an hour of sitting and then some of it in the bus and now home. With his overdue bills there to greet him.

John wasn't a frustrated man. But something made him want to tear those bills away and throw it at someone, someone with blond hair like his, taller, knackered half the time. _He_ was the older brother. She ought to listen to him, if not her beloved partner. He'd told Harry he'd speak to her when she was sober before hanging up the phone, and Harry hadn't called him back. That was three months ago. Clara kept sending him updates via messages. They were planning some intervention before Christmas, at the earliest, if things went from bad to worse. Apparently they had to remain content with 'bad'.

John felt like he was his father sometimes.

He looked at his empty flat. To his phone. To the eleventh missed call from Jeanette. God, what the hell had happened to that woman today?

He switched his phone off. Ignoring the persisting ache in his shoulders, he put down _A Clinical Atlas on Human Body_ on his desk and undressed for a decent shower. If anything, his job would keep him occupied and keep those paychecks coming.

 

* * *

 

That Friday morning, John was more than surprised to see Sherlock Holmes outside his class. Surely it was a coincidence—a very good one—that Holmes had arrived during his fifteen minutes of alone time. He came in even after John didn't react to his presence. John wondered if he understood the notion of ignoring at all.

"What's this, then?" John demanded, as Holmes peeked into his classroom. Empty classrooms were a boon and John wasn't really the one to walk all the way to PG Science Building to his office and waste ten minutes during his journey when he could easily find an empty classroom and munch on his favourite sandwich.

"Lombard threw me out of his class," he deadpanned, "May I come in, sir?"

There was something about Sherlock's expression that made John wanted to laugh. But he kept his reserve and let out a sigh, "Well, come in then. This is not exactly _my_ classroom either."

There was something to the boy. Holmes was usually quiet, but his presence spoke volumes through a constant field of curiosity and mysteriousness around him. John wondered if the boy got bullied or even hazed for his intelligence, more so with such a cynical, sarcastic tongue as his.

He immediately felt a sort of pity for him, if he was indeed hazed for that. Brilliant mind like his, didn't deserve to be played around with. And then John curbed that feeling. Pity was not a word he'd choose. Something close to awe, maybe. And the feeling that he was harbouring a dangerous fugitive.

"Something's up," Holmes began, fixing his narrow silver-grey eyes on John, beginning to observe him. John fought the urge to pick at his tie.

"Yes, your exams," John diverted the topic masterfully, "Yesterday, weren't they?"

Holmes's figure, which had been so alert and on-the-move till then, buckled like a bridge collapsing, "Easy."

"Oh," it stung John that the papers he had made so meticulously, worked till late nights to make them while keeping Holmes' intellect in his mind, had come across as easy to him, "that would change in the next paper, surely."

"I hope it does, sir. . . anyway, back to where I was, there's something radiating from you," he stated scholarly, "Unease."

John shifted his chair very slightly. So much for _masterfully_ diverting the topic, "Good to know. I'll start work on that, thank you very much." And he went back to his own work.

"For a man who pays attention to their grooming, you're keeping a rough dusting of stubble on your cheeks. You haven't combed your hair, not bothered to put on a fresh shirt. Shoulders stiff, your grip on your papers too hard and too careless to have given you five paper cuts over the day. Even the airconditioning isn't on. . . which reminds me, switch it on." He ended with an order. John tried not to frown at him.

"You go and switch on the AC. You're closer to the switch anyway."

"Irrelevant," Holmes declared, "You're my professor, and you're paid to serve me."

"And to order you as well," John pointed out, with a smirk that wasn't entirely his own. it just seemed to come by when he was near Holmes, "I'm not your servant, I don't take orders. I'm the guy who comes in for an hour, drones on for those who care to listen and then goes away without making a difference."

John winced inwardly at that. He hadn't meant to say all that shit. Holmes snorted at his bitter statement, "You think very low of your profession, Dr. Watson. Professors are officially allowed to be sadists. In fact, you should be happy."

John nodded stiffly, "Is that why you envy us?" he asked with a wry smile, "We can be sadists and you can't be."

Holmes rolled his eyes, "I'm anything but a sadist."

John looked up from his papers. The distraction was welcome, but he preferred not to think so. He put down his glasses on the table, "Is that so? What with all that attitude and demeaning—?"

"Those who I demean deserve it," he drawled, but sending a calculating look in John's direction, "I don't do it because I like it, if that's what you're saying. You think being nice to people would just shatter whatever high opinion I apparently hold of myself. That's not true."

John had considered that. Holmes usually came across as a douche bag. And that's what most douche bags thought like. He could think of no appropriate response to that, so he just smiled, with bitterness hinting along the edges as he wore back his glasses like his battle armour. The sensible thing would be to get up and go away to his class, which was a door away. But then, John was never good at doing the sensible thing.

As of almost on cue, Sherlock stood and brushed light dust off his jumper. It was still October, John nodded. It wasn't that cold.

"Something fascinating here?" Sherlock asked dryly, pointing to his jumper. John shook his head. How could Holmes face be always so un-expressive, even when he laughed his guts out.

"it's still October," he said, "not that cold. Just thinking."

At that, Sherlock tugged at his jumper, pulling it over his head. John almost shut his eyes at that, not knowing what to expect. Holmes was wearing a shirt under it after all. What could he expect? If it was a girl, John wouldn't have looked.

"The pile of my unclean clothes is almost teetering," Holmes said, and John opened his eyes, not-expecting the worst.

Holmes wasn't shirtless, but there was a large acid stain on his shirt, expertly hidden by his jumper, "This was the only clean shirt I had. Quite an interesting story, this one."

John decided not to ask. If it were him and his professor, he would just have offered a verbal explanation, not the illustration of it. But then, Holmes was tactless, if not anything else.

But then, any professor wouldn't have bothered to even point out that a jumper was too out of place for October.

"Anyway, I'd better be off," Holmes chuckled. John wondered how it was possible for Holmes to concentrate only on the expression of humour and entirely eliminate any side expressions of kindness or even some sort of happiness.

When Holmes left, John finally released the breath he hadn't realised he was holding. Well, that had been eventful.

 

* * *

 

Recess was the best time to test his theories, Sherlock thought.

Sherlock pondered over what Molly had told him. Crushes. He couldn't remember a time when he had a crush on anyone. Ever. There had not been time for that. Adolescence had hit him at the age of twelve, which was younger than most boys, but it hadn't particularly upset or surprised him, almost as if he had been counting on it. After all, his mind was ahead most boys, so it was obvious that his body had to be too, hadn't it?

He had been too busy with the changes in his body to pay attention to anybody else. He had always seen the change that adolescence had brought about in Mycroft and had been fascinated by it, how hormones could bring about such a vast change in a person's character, influence it permanently.

That was before he realised that Mycroft had become more of a dick when he became fourteen. Sherlock was just a kid then, but his mind, already remarkable even at the age of seven, could recall nearly everything Mycroft had said or done during his teenage years.

He still remembered how he found out those year tens screwing over in the shed behind the school. He had found them when he was in year seven, still innocent, corruptible. All five boys, lost in bliss, with the needles still partially dangling out of the point of connection in their arms, into the veins. Sherlock had never seen such a sight before.

Sherlock had never thought another seventh year would find him like that in Upper Sixth.

He shook those thoughts away. He watched John Watson, who was sitting at a thankful distance from him, biting into a sandwich and chatting with his fellow professors. He looked nice when he laughed, no! Sherlock told himself very strictly, he had to concentrate on figuring out whether he had something as childish as a crush on him or not. And whether John Watson wanted him back too, if the week was anything to go by.

Well, only three times a week at the most. Sherlock wanted to know, but he wasn't desperate.

Molly, meanwhile, wondered why she sat with a guy who could heartlessly abandon her anytime even though he hadn't, "You're staring."

"Hmm?"

"You're staring at him, Sherlock. People will think something's wrong."

He cast his eyes around. Everyone was busy in their own group, "What people? No one's looking at us."

She looked around too. She hated how he was always right. Suddenly, Dr. Watson rose from his chair and appeared to be coming in their direction. Molly quickly turned away, but Sherlock didn't. Finally, he ended up near them, caught by Sherlock's persevering stare, "Oh, good afternoon, Sherlock."

Molly tried not to splutter in disbelief. He called him 'Sherlock'? And he came over to talk to _him_?

"Afternoon then, professor," said he cheekily, giving no display of the sort of nervousness that people usually have upon talking with their first crushes, "And how many more lives and careers do you plan to sabotage today?"

Dr. Watson gave an amused chuckle, "By Monday, I might sabotage yours too."

"Well then, I look forward to it, sir."

Molly couldn't help but stare at him in disbelief. He was flirting with him?! And it was like she didn't even exist! Meanwhile, the professor frowned at his empty tray, "Non-existent appetite?"

Sherlock simply shrugged, "I'm okay for a while. Digestion just slows me down, but you're a connoisseur of human body. You know better, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," said Dr. Watson, "and although I'll pretend that that wasn't sarcasm, because it wasn't," Sherlock smirked at that, "You need to eat, Sherlock. . ." He turned to Molly, who had been staring at them since Dr. Watson came over to them, "You must be the girl who sits with him, aren't you?"

She tried not to narrow her eyes. He was 'Sherlock', and she was only 'the girl who sat with him'. She was beginning to think she didn't have an identity separate from Sherlock, "Yes, sir."

"I just want to congratulate you, for being so sane around this one all the time. No, I'm not joking, I really do. If I were you, I'd have gone mental till now—"

 _Oh, like you'd know_ , Molly thought.

There was a scrape of metal against floor, and Sherlock turned away from them like a wronged prima donna and threw a sulk. Molly giggled as Dr. Watson threw her a 'See what I mean?' look. "Well then, see you guys on Monday, I suppose. I was just throwing this into the waste bin," he pointed at his empty tray. He walked away to his original destination, the wastebin, while Sherlock kept sulking for the entire lunch. Molly pondered on Dr. Watson's words. She really should be given an award for staying relatively sane around him for so long.

"I need more data. . ." he muttered to himself.

"Sherlock, you do realise that you were flirting with him, don't you?"

He turned to her, looking very confused and forgetting about his sulk period, "What do you mean? I wasn't flirting. I was just making conversation."

Molly's eyes narrowed, "Right. You don't "make" conversation with me."

"That's because you talk about cats."

"You were flirting, Sherlock," she giggled a little at the incredulity of the idea, in spite of having seen the proof in front of her eyes. She couldn't understand how he could flirt and still not realise it, "You're never like this with anybody else."

"I'm like this with you!" he protested vehemently. But she simply shook her head, feeling grateful that she knew about something more than Sherlock did. It was such a wonderful feeling, that Sherlock was looking up to her to know about something he probably had no idea about.

Her phone beeped an alarm signalling the end of lunch half-hour, "Come on Sherlock, we've got to go."

 

* * *

 

Molly wept about why she had even thought of hammering into Sherlock's head about liking his professor. He had become ten times worse during the Anatomy lectures and a million times rude, shoving insults in Dr. Watson's direction whenever he got an opportunity. She felt almost afraid to leave him alone in the class with the professor during those Mondays, fearing that Dr. Watson might end up murdering him or hurting his feelings, if that was even possible. But it was actually sweet seeing Sherlock's instincts taking over him as he desperately tried to attract Dr. Watson's attention. Those mini-fights in the class were all flimsy pretexts to talk to him, after all.

And it was even loads funnier to see Sherlock pick-pocketing him, and when Dr. Watson would search for his whatever, be it wallet or some papers or other, Sherlock would magically appear, claiming that he had dropped them. And then look of happiness in his eyes that he desperately tried to mask with indifference and a roll of his eyes when Dr. Watson thanked him profusely was simply endearing.

But what worried her the most was the fact that she _knew_ that this was going to go all wrong. He was his professor, and Sherlock was his student, and it wasn't _right_. She tried to warn him several times, dropping subtle hints, but Sherlock didn't seem to care. And even if they got together, and if the word got out, Sherlock could get expelled, and Dr. Watson could get sacked. More so, Sherlock had no idea whether Dr. Watson liked men or not. All she knew was that she couldn't see Sherlock heartbroken, not after seeing him so happy. Sherlock wasn't good at rejections, she knew.

Sherlock didn't _do_ rejections.

 

* * *

 

The Monday class, and the hour after that. . . John wasn't ready for it anymore.

Jeanette had texted him again for the fifth time that week, saying that she would like to have dinner again sometime. John wanted to, for God's sake, he wanted them to work out even though he knew that it simply wasn't possible. The sex was good, _mind-blowing_ in fact. It always was, but Jeanette was a compulsive cheat; sleeping around was a part of her, something John would never be able to reconcile with.

And now, Sherlock Holmes was another madness that had crept up.

John found himself oddly drawn to this weird teenager. He always allowed him to stay in his class during self-study seeing as he had no other place to go to. Despite what other professors claimed, Sherlock wasn't all that appalling after the class. The he remembered that he stayed on his own free will. The other professors must have been talking about detention or something similar. Well, John couldn't blame him. Even he used to make it his personal responsibility to hate every single professor who ever gave him a detention during his time in university.

Sherlock Holmes was brilliant, that's what John understood, over the weeks during the various anatomy classes and lab sessions. He has brilliant in a way John had never known that a person could be. He knew everything in the textbook (and perhaps beyond that as well, John reasoned, but then how much could a person know) and even though he never really listened to John in class, he did, however, like to contradict John on some points and make him feel like a fool in front of his own students. That was the irritating and very mortifying part, John thought. Otherwise. . .

Sherlock was actually better _after_ class. Quiet, peaceful, emitting a distracting little hum while he buried his head in three different textbooks that miraculously fit in his little bookbag and made it seem like a member of the fifth dimension or something. John pretended not to notice how his right thigh always bobbed when he was deep in thought in a plane that John couldn't reach, no matter what. It was these times that made John feel restless and as a result, definitely better than the usual emptiness of his own life. The buzzing feeling in his mind was something that John wasn't sure that he could take it, but it didn't mean that he didn't welcome it.

Well, he didn't really _welcome_ it. It was sort of imposing every time Sherlock sat a desk away from him, but it was a relief nonetheless. A relief that Sherlock could occupy his mind like the roots of an ever-growing tree.

He found it hard to keep his eyes from travelling over to the last bench during a test just to see how he was faring. He wondered if Sherlock had realised that he was slowly upping the difficulty level of the last two questions especially for him, seeing as he always complained that tests were unimportant in the grand scheme of things and that they wasted his precious time. And also because John wanted to realise his full potential.

And whenever he read his test papers, John wondered what Sherlock was still doing as a sophomore in St. Bart's.

John supposed that he did know. After all, one time during the test, Sherlock had actually caught him staring and had winked at him. Winked, as in he looked like he was thanking him for some decent questions worth his time, or so John thought as he turned away, slightly pink for no reason at all. When he turned back to snatch an involuntary glance, Sherlock's attention was fixed on his paper again, like nothing had happened.

John couldn't grade test papers that day.

And that girl. Who was she, the one who always sat with him, the mousey haired pretty girl? John couldn't help but wonder. He always found himself wondering whether she was his girlfriend or not. They seemed too close to be friends anyway. John had spotted them giggling together in the class many a time, leaning in and whispering in low voices to each other. They seemed so intimate that John didn't have the heart to separate them. She always waited for him after class, and John never found one without the other, except for Mondays, where Sherlock, knowing that Dr. Watson's class remained empty at that time, stayed in there, sitting in the front bench, and making a thousand questions swim restlessly inside John's head.

For every Monday during the three weeks, John had allowed him to stay in his class. They barely spoke, but the room felt like it was going to explode if they kept up the tension (at least that's what it felt like to John). So, the next Monday, after the anatomy class had ended, when Molly asked Sherlock whether he would want to go to the cafeteria or the grounds for studying, he declined, saying that he would rather study in Dr. Watson's empty room. She shrugged her shoulders, and left with an incoherent mumble about a book in the library as Sherlock went and settled in the front benches with a book on criminal psychology.

Dr. Watson flitted through the papers until he found Sherlock's, because it was only obvious that he should discuss the paper with him, in case something turned out to be miraculously wrong in his paper. With a short sigh, he began. It took him more than fifteen minutes to find it. Because when he did, there was no name written on it, just the roll number.

"I can't imagine how they correct your midterm papers when you don't write your name or even your year and department. . ." John began, "only your roll number."

Sherlock looked rolled his eyes, "Tedious."

John put his pen down and cocked an eyebrow, "Is that so? It won't be very tedious when you discover that your worksheet was lost and that you're going to be marked absent for your paper."

"Impossible," Sherlock pointed out. "The invigilator passes the attendance and supplement sheet around. I'll have written my name and done my signature there."

John pursed his lips, "Your score won't be calculated, and you'll most certainly score a lot lesser than you usually—"

"Like I said," Sherlock spoke, cracking his knuckles, "tedious. Unimportant. Boring. Choose whatever you like."

John narrowed his eyes. "Okay. I get it." He nodded stiffly and went back to his papers, pretending to read them when he clearly didn't have his glasses on, "Admirable, I think, I suppose. Ahem. . . good."

Now it was Sherlock's turn to narrow his eyes. "Get what?"

"Knowledge for knowledge's sake. I can. . . appreciate that."

Sherlock sniggered. "You really are a stuck-up prude, aren't you?"

"Excuse me?" John was a little shocked, that coming from an undergrad, "I'm your professor, and I'd appreciate it if you displayed some sort of sobriety in your speech while you're talking to me."

"Ooh, a lot of long words there, professor. Where did you pick that up from, Harrow or someplace?"

John sunk his head upon his breast and set back to work. Weird fellow, he was. He sat in the last bench during the class and in the front bench after the class was over. John stared at the cover of his book, wondering what exactly was going on in his mind. . .

"You have questions," Sherlock remarked after a long time, without even looking up, and John snapped his head up in complete attention like a private listening to his commander. "So many and so loud that I can hear them and it's annoying," he raised his head, steepling his fingers together with elbows resting on the desk.

John gave an exaggerated sigh and decided to give in to his curiosity, "Why do you stay here, every Monday after my class ends?"

It sounded like _why don't you stay after class even on Thursdays,_ but John decided not to dwell on it. Sherlock frowned, and yet his face remained artfully blank, "It's self study hour. I thought you went through my schedule—"

"Yeah, I know," said he, taking off his glasses and pressing his fingers to his eyes, "what I meant was why here? You could go to the library for self study."

"I hate the library," he declared, his voice a growl, his lips curling with contempt, "It's full of idiots."

John nodded, going through several papers, "Going by your logic, if the library is full of idiots then the whole place must be filled with idiots, since those who go to the library are lesser idiots."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, as if he had stated something that should've been very obvious, "Yes, even though your logic is faulty."

"Right," John noted the endearing rebelliousness in him, "What about the grounds?"

"No," he answered absentmindedly, flipping through the pages of his oversized textbook, "Soccer idiots, I might get hit by a rogue ball. Besides, it's slightly nippy out there."

"What about other free rooms, you know. . . like this one?"

"Other professors kick me out whenever I try and enter," he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, making John grin at the mental image and sending an odd feeling down his chest, "Cafeteria is noisy and the labs are never empty. Empty rooms have cameras and I'm not willing to study in them like a fugitive. Doesn't suit me. This room is the best option, seeing as the ventilation is the best. . . and because. . . you let me sit here."

"So. . . you hate the grounds, the cafe and the library. . ." he muttered to himself, gulping water down his throat, feeling like he was indeed harbouring a fugitive.

"I don't explicitly hate it, as in. . ." Sherlock decided to give in, after all, it was another of his achievements, "I'm banned from the library," he proclaimed, proud and annoyed all at once, "My library card was stolen last year, and this year, the new librarian revoked it."

John choked on his water, sending jolts of alarm through an outwardly composed Sherlock as he tried to cover it up, dabbing his mouth and his front with a handkerchief, "Excuse me," he coughed violently and before Sherlock could comprehend or keep up, it had turned into laughter, "How can someone be banned from the library?!"

Sherlock looked oddly pleased. No one had found that particular feat funny, not even Molly, whose sense of humour came closest to his own. His eyes lit up, "You want to see? I'll show them my card, and they'll check and not allow me."

John frowned a little, his eyes growing wide at the strange offer, "No thanks, I'll erm. . . take your word for it."

Sherlock's expression dropped altogether as he studied him calculatingly, "Right, okay."

A tense silence filled the space between them as they returned to their work. Sherlock kept glancing at him, as the latter kept his head bowed in his work resolutely, even though he had finished with it. Slowly and slowly, Sherlock's attention managed to stray from his book and settled wholly on the not-so-oblivious John. Meanwhile, John remained immersed in his papers, not looking up for a moment to confront Sherlock staring at him. Finally, not able to contain it anymore, he blurted out the one question that had been bothering him the most, "Is she your girlfriend?"

It took Sherlock a little more than two seconds to figure out what exactly he was saying, "Sorry what?"

John just realised how inappropriate that question was. Sherlock was a student. Professors don't ask their students about their girlfriends or boyfriends. But he was staring at him so intently, piercing him with his questioning gaze that he let it fall as he lowered his voice, cursing his stupidity.

"That girl," he nodded as he smiled to indicate that he wasn't prying, "who, erm. . . sits with you every day. . . is she your girlfriend?"

Now it was Sherlock's turn to look at him as if he was an E.T. but his expression softened gradually, "No, Molly is my friend. Best friend," he added, a little proud of himself. John noted the tone of his voice as he said 'best friend'.

"Yeah well," said John, just for the sake of saying something as he slowly ran out of words, "just wondering. Not that I. . . you know."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, fighting tooth and nail to hide a smirk, "I know what?"

John would have given anything up for the first person to come barging in for the next boring anatomy class. He risked a glance at his watch. Another half-an-hour was remaining, "Nothing," he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk and his head in his palms in exasperation, "are you always this annoying? Even in person, after the class?"

He rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair, "Do you always point out the obvious? No wonder you've got a Ph. D."

John didn't know how to answer that. Sherlock always beat him to the punch. "I think you're here to study, Sherlock. I suggest you do that."

"Well, you were the one who was bombarding me with your pathetic attempts at conversation, _professor_ ," said he in a low voice.

"Well, you're the one who started," John pointed out, "And anyway, I'm getting tired of this daily childish behaviour. Giving a shout of 'boring' in the class certainly isn't cool!"

Sherlock frowned, "Why would I want to look _cool?_ The content of your lectures ARE boring!"

John suppressed a sigh as he rose from his chair and sat down beside Sherlock, "Sherlock, your attitude. . . it isn't healthy at all for a student. You forget that many others come here to study as well, and your continuous disturbances make it impossible for others to study."

Sherlock sniggered, "Oh, come on! Even you're moderately clever enough not to believe that!"

John set his coffee down on the table, and took his glasses off, staring at him for a few moments, "Excuse me?"

"Please! Why else would you have coffee right after lunch? Because you try your best not to fall asleep during teaching, of course!"

John bit the insides of his cheek as he realised how half-right Sherlock was, "Intelligence and wit isn't all. You've got to have a proper attitude to get to the top, or else you'll fail. . ."

He stopped when he saw how close they were sitting, swallowing when he found that Holmes' fingers were mere inches away from his hand. Before he could give himself a mental shake, Sherlock spoke, a mischievous glint in his eye, his voice lower and deeper than it even had been, "You'd fail me?"

John backed away, shaking his head, heart thumping powerfully in his chest, words breathless and lips dry and mouth too wet, "No, I didn't mean that. . . I—" his eyes travelled frantically to Sherlock's right hand dangling from the table, dangerously close to John's body, fingertips just brushing the waist of John's trousers. Even though Sherlock did not seem to be breathing and even though he was two inches away from him, John could still feel hot breath on his ear and his neck as he crowded him.

"Well, go ahead then," said he with a hypnotising chuckle, pitching his voice deeper as he pierced John with his gaze, a smirk adorning his pink plush lips as John continued to stare at them, "I could fail, and then you'd have to give me extra backup lectures to improve my score, won't you?"

John stayed where he was now, eyes wide and fixed on Sherlock as Sherlock continued to come closer. Up close, his lips looked plush. John was sure that if he sank his teeth into them and withdrew, there'd be no sign of any welts on them, except for a very telltale swell. Sherlock crowded him up against the other chairs and John could sense danger when he saw his chances of escape dwindling. He could imagine it, pushing back at Holmes, pushing him against the wall, unable to touch, unable to die, during those Mondays, his heterosexuality lying in a wasted pile on the floor along with his clothes while they were reduced to a groaning mess of naked, hot bodies writhing, entwined together in the dance they'd lead together. . .

 _Shut up_ , he tried to tell his brain, _it's wrong and unnatural_. _He's fucking with your mind._ But to no avail. His palms were flat on the desk, his eyes wide and he sure looked appraochable, for Sherlock didn't take the hint and move away.

"I think," Sherlock whispered, and he slid his warm, unbelievably warm fingers slowly over John's as he pitched his voice deeper still. How could he be so warm when he was so cold outwardly? Holmes may crack jokes time from time, but outwardly, he was still cold and indifferent. He never showed a shred of emotion, except for a smirk at a good joke or some mischief, "I'm going to need a lot of extra tutoring, in fact, _professor_."

The last word made John snap out of it. He was his professor, he already had a girlfriend, and he certainly wasn't gay, no matter however Sherlock had succeeded in seducing him. He nodded and stood up abruptly, causing alarm to shoot through Sherlock at the sudden change in his demeanour. He retreated back to his desk and stayed there for the rest of the time. He knew that Sherlock's eyes were on him, he could feel them. Finally, the charged hour dragged itself now burdensomely to a conclusion and he waited for Sherlock to leave. When he didn't, he took initiative.

"I suggest you find yourself another room to study in, Mr. Holmes. And study hard," he said smoothly, standing up with dignity, anything to not let Sherlock know just how successful he had been. He tried not to notice the shocked expression in Holmes' eyes as he went to throw open the door for him, even though he had a hunch that Sherlock wouldn't be at least hurt. Sherlock stayed in his place motionless for some time. When it became clear that the John wasn't going to reconsider, he swallowed the rejection and dumped his books into his bookbag, slung it over his shoulder and left.

John tried not to stare after him, ignoring the wretched feeling in his chest as he wiped his sweaty palms with his handkerchief.


	6. Chapter 6

"Well, it's karma I suppose," said Molly, sneakily inserting a sandwich between an absentminded Sherlock's fingers, in the hope that he would eat something, "I told you not to wind the librarians up, didn't I?"

They were seated in the cafeteria during the lunch the next day as Molly continued to feed him little bits of cucumber and mayonnaise sandwich as an experiment. Some people stared weirdly at the two of them and tried not to come across as staring at the eccentric couple. Most of them already pinned the two of them down as a steady couple, something which neither Sherlock nor Molly bothered to deny anymore, seeing that it was such a widespread and unchangeable notion. Molly was always anxious about Sherlock being called her boyfriend, but Sherlock just brushed it away, coming across as oblivious and making Molly do the double duty of feeling awkward.

There were no words to express how Sherlock had felt when Dr. Watson had asked him to find another place for studying. The overly exaggerated concept of 'being gobsmacked' would be a proper start. He had never been so spectacularly wrong about anything—or anyone for that matter. He wasn't used to being wrong. And he hoped Molly didn't come to know about it. He knew that if she did, it would mean a misinterpretation of the rejection on epic proportions and subsequent signing up for a subscription of a dozen boxes of tissue paper and cookies every week.

Not to mention, more enlightening kitty tales.

Apart from that, irritation had been the predominant emotion that Sherlock had felt. The librarian had revoked his newly-issued card for sweet revenge, the cafeteria was always noisy and there was always something or the other going on in the open air theatre, and plus it was a famous haunt for addicts and noise-loving people and he wasn't going to go near them unless he needed something (other than coke). Not that Sherlock couldn't study in a noisy environment, it was just he hated handling that much amount of stupidity. Grounds was off-limits too, after the incident that had happened to one of the freshmen who had got hit by a football right in the face, and Sherlock did not want a broken nose, thank you very much. And of course, nowhere near a tree, because of its inhabitants above on the branches.

Empty classrooms were the sweetest deal, but Molly refused to go away anywhere without Sherlock and now with the tests almost over and the freshers parties approaching, her so-called "friends" had begun to desert her to hang out with someone who was cooler than Molly Hooper. And with Sherlock with her in a classroom, she refused to shut the door (as if he would do anything, he told her several times but decided to respect her limits when she seemed reluctant). And of course, because of what had happened last year, which involved some of their year people, as a lame joke, locking them in a room till the next class arrived, they vowed never to sit in a free classroom again.

There was one thing that Sherlock loved: going and sitting in an upperclassmen's class and learning what was being taught there. But no other teacher would allow him because they feared what he could glean about their lives by just one look and they were very keen to avoid any rumours about themselves. Although Sherlock often enjoyed being thought of as someone who shouldn't be crossed, right now it wasn't exactly working to his advantage.

Professor Watson was his beacon of light, to put it in Sherlock's dramatic manner. And now, it was gone, because he had been hasty and wrong about the professor's apparently very chaste intentions towards him. Why were real professors such stuck-up prudes? Why couldn't they be more like in porn?

"Wasn't my fault," said he brusquely, shoving the sandwich angrily into his mouth as Molly stared at him in amazement for eating _during_ the recess break. "The collections of texts in the library IS subpar. I was only doing them a favour by pointing it out. If anything, they should've thanked _me_."

"It's not subpar," she maintained, "You could say the same for a school library, but not St. Bart's, Sherlock. It's got one of the best collection of books on forensic science and pathology. If anything, you could've used a better excuse."

Sherlock pouted, looking utterly scandalised, "I did not! Anyway, stop advertising about the university."

Something was wrong and Molly knew it. Not because Sherlock was being more of a drama queen than last week, when all she saw of Sherlock was at his place and in his shared classes with her and she often wondered where Sherlock loitered around. Now, her experiment on Sherlock with eating was in its last stage. Consciously or not, Sherlock hated food. On top of that, Sherlock hated cucumber, declaring it an abomination for having no taste at all.

"Sherlock?" she called his name tentatively as he watched a short blond man smiling politely, a little bit tetchily to his fellow professors, away from him, without him. He gave no indication that he had heard her, but she carried on in a soft voice nonetheless, hoping he hadn't kept her on semi-permanent mute, "Is there something you want to tell me?"

Sherlock tore his eyes away from Dr. Watson to Molly. She always knew. How did she always know?

"Urgh, no," He replied, disgusted at Molly treating him like one of her girl friends whilst trying to ignore the absurd, irrational heaviness in his chest. Somehow, Professor Watson looked even better when he laughed than he did last week. And he would have to wait till Thursday to get into his class. Because he was now not allowed to be alone with him in a class.

"Why do you suddenly want to go to library then? You do remember that you're not allowed, don't you?" she asked, pouring over a new book she had borrowed this morning. Sherlock had cast a look over the promising text and declared it the doom of forensic sciences. In return for his concern and kindness, Molly had not deigned to write notes for him in Organic Chemistry, and Sherlock had been asked to get out of class with a lame excuse of "disturbing the environment with his usual antics". As he loitered around in the corridor leading to the inorganic chemistry lab 2, Professor Watson had come through, and Sherlock had found himself wishing mentally to whoever cared to have a look inside his mind for Professor Watson to remove his glasses so that he could see those marvellous blue eyes, eyes that burnt with a fire but almost doused by the drudgery of life and seemed to unconsciously glow at the sight of Sherlock just the previous week.

But Professor Watson had simply swept past him, regarding him as any ordinary student, no emotion betraying his face. Not that he saw his face; instead he had felt a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment at being made to kicked out of class even though the man wouldn't know of it. His mind had screamed to him to stop Professor Watson and say the next thing that came up in his mind, even tell him that Lombard had kicked him out again and have Watson ask him how and why with his trademark amused/kind smile, but he found that he couldn't. Instead he simply looked down at his trainers, waiting for him to pass through and then letting his gaze linger on his retreating figure.

"I need books," he replied absentmindedly, but Molly translated it easily. Sherlock never really needed or even liked books. He loved labs much more, preferring to the learn things all by lonesome.

"I mean, what happened with Professor Watson? You were, like, practically invisible the last week, probably hanging out with your crush, but this week—"

He winced, "I don't "hang out", Molly. And stop saying crush!" he chided, "It's childish."

She snorted, "Well, you are childish."

He shot her a look and she recoiled numbly, "Well, okay. You need to go to the library. Because they've got books, and you don't have a single one. That's your excuse, isn't it?"

"It's not an excuse. I don't have any books because I really don't need the course," Sherlock reminded her with a face and a shrug and proceeded to watch Dr. Watson again. Molly thought it a wonder that no one had noticed till now that her "boyfriend" was interested in a professor, "so much as the equipment here. I can learn the exam-relevant portions all on the last day, you know that."

"So why go to the library?" Molly pressed on, "Go to the labs, learn it all in there. There's a test on Friday, but. . ." she trailed off, knowing that that couldn't be a problem for Sherlock. It made sense after all, in the context of Sherlock's apparent disregard for a sciences undergraduate's harsh timetable.

Sherlock let out a sigh and brought a cigarette to his lips, lighting it with precision even though his eyes were still focussed on the professor. Molly let out a small grunt of protest, at which Sherlock only mouthed "babysitter".

"Where do you propose I spend the free hour then? Being bored?!" Sherlock snapped, and Molly beat into her protective shell that tried to deflect the full force of Sherlock's dominating nature, "The cafeteria? The grounds? Classroom? The infamous Make-out Point?"

The penny finally dropped, "Oh! Sherlock, please, _please_ , for God's sake, don't tell me you—"

"—got myself kicked out from another place?" Sherlock completed for her as blandly as possible, "Yes I did."

"That you did something stupid," Molly gestured at Professor Watson, "Did you ask him. . ." she practically scanned the entire five-mile radius around her before she spoke further in a voice that ought to be reserved for Simpson, "out?"

Sherlock did not reply, simply huffed out a smoke cloud. Molly sighed, "You did not."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "Stop talking like a slice. It's beneath me, talking about. . . people."

"Even Professor Watson?"

The corner of his lips curled indignantly and Molly cracked up at that, "He's your teacher, Sherlock," she said weakly.

Sherlock wanted to say that loads of teachers had affairs with their students but refrained from saying that, for the sake of Molly's sanity. And besides, he did not ask him out. He had simply made an offer that John Watson had rejected at once. The man was too bloody moral. And too straight. He probably considered Sherlock only a deranged, depraved maniac and himself the mature adult to make him "See The Light".

"No you can _not_ pretend that you're the Queen and sulk at that, Sherlock," she said and Sherlock turned away, tuning her words out of his system even though she was correct, had been right all along.

"Sorry," she muttered sheepishly. He didn't tune that out.

The entire scene of Sherlock not-so-secretly watching Professor Watson while smoking fag looked like a greaser movie right out of the 50's where the leather-wearing guy watched the country prude with acute hunger in his eyes. Any moment, the prude would look in the leather's direction and catch his eye warily, interestedly.

That did not happen.

She took the fall, tried one last experiment on him to accurately judge his mental health. Mycroft had taught her this because apparently, Sherlock, being Mr. Punchline, always replied to everything. Sherlock always replied to this, and the whatever she got were an accurate representation.

"I'm sad, Sherlock," said she, "Tell me a story."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, " Once there was a very stupid Geoffrey Lestrade."

She withdrew instantly, frowning at him, wanting to tell him that it was Gregory and that he was  _her_  boyfriend so he better stop insulting him, but before she could say anything he started off again, "He was so stupid that everyone died. End of story."

With that he walked out of there after having finished his cigarette, leaving behind a bemused Molly and a half-eaten sandwich. She tried to recall the last time Sherlock had been like this over a person. Never. Sherlock didn't even know that many people during his school life except those he scored his hit-offs from. Something was definitely wrong. She knew Sherlock was a little sensitive when it came to rejection, he always had been, even as a teenager when he interacted with his peers. Drugs had always been a circle in where he was accepted, and Sherlock took to it, took to the foul acquaintances back then. . .

She watched his retreating figure, and then shoved her books into her bag, and the sandwich into her mouth, following his direction.

 

* * *

 

John was aware.

John was more than aware that he was being watched.

And he was also aware who was watching him.

He bit into a sandwich as his colleagues around him sipped coffee and attacked the food voraciously as if they didn't eat the same thing every day. All he contributed to the conversation was a polite smile and a "yes, you're right" and "oh, sure" whether he listened or not. Years of sharing his life with an irritating and dramatic younger sibling who loved the sound of her own voice far too much had taught him that skill well. He realised that he was sitting such that he could see Sherlock out of the corner of his eye and he corrected his posture without trying to think much of it.

He concentrated on his coffee and his impression on all those who were sitting around them. The youngest of his colleagues was Abbott, who was of course, more than thirty five. In such a clique, John, barely thirty, couldn't help but feel left out. He didn't fit in. He had no idea about wife or kid talks. He had no idea who 'Brook' or 'Murdoch' were, since those names were popular with the staff. He knew the way his colleagues looked down upon him as young and inexperienced. He felt like there was a hole somewhere in him that had been filled the few past weeks, but now it was gaping open and was making John think about all that he didn't want to think of.

He could sense Sherlock getting up and leaving, and that Hooper girl hurrying after him. Sherlock had said that she was not his girlfriend. But the way she kept feeding him all the time made her come across as one. Or like she harboured a secret crush on him.

For only a few weeks, John thought he had found his fit in the whole of university. People were either younger or older than him. Granted, Sherlock was—must be—nearly ten years younger than him (and to think that John was ten and had already had his first real kiss with Taylor Wedell when Sherlock was an infant barely able to hold his head up!), and he wasn't exactly _normal_ , but there was no one else John had felt more comfortable with. Sherlock was a. . . good kind of not-normal. John liked that, the way he didn't even try to hide his not-normalness from others.

Until he pulled off that shit with him.

John felt himself shivering in his sat at the memory. He easily blamed it on the cruel late Autumn breeze. It had all been nice and lovely before Sherlock had hinted at _them_ screwing around, and now John couldn't stop thinking about it.

He felt confused, and extremely at edge. He was supposed to be grossed at even the slightest hint that he'd like to. . . touch another _man_ in that way. But he. . . wasn't. Was he one of those unfortunate people who realised that they were gay after they had spent fifty years of their life married and with ten children and hundred grandchildren? He hoped not. He knew he wasn't. He had seen naked men more times than he could recall. He had never had any erotic stirrings for them.

"You got your papers?" came a voice. John banished his thoughts to a far corner of his mind and looked up. He glanced at every single of his colleagues. Oh, wouldn't they love to know what John was thinking of? Or who he was thinking of.

"Oh yeah," Abbott was saying, "you know the worst part, getting answer sheets on a Friday and thinking that your whole weekend is ruined."

Several others chuckled. One of them patted on his back with a grunt of, "I know." John wasn't sure how to react to that.

"It was lovely two years ago. Make the MCQ paper, and feed it in the computer. No correcting," another said, "It's now double duty. Twenty plus two questions for internals, plus set the quizzes and projects so that no one could look it up in a book or on the internet. Make twenty two questions for thirty bloody marks! I could write a whole book based on the questions I've set till now!"

"Now now, don't you fret too much, Dr. Wilde," another said good-naturedly, "the freshers parties are almost here, and then U-Turn. It's practically dry season for us. No students to teach."

"Yeah, I'm thinking of going on a holiday. Somewhere quiet like Cornwall, yeah? Expel the London smog from your lungs!"

"No students to teach?" John's voice rose to almost a squeak. The others turned to look at the interrupter.

"Oh yes," Abbott began, "Watson's new here—"

And there it was again. _New_.

"—Actually, Watson, the freshers' is two weeks away and U-Turn after a month," he explained, "there'll literally be no students attending classes, except for some of those good ones who don't like enjoying."

John gaped at him. That—really? Oh, how John would've loved St. Bart's.

"Yeah," Abbott grinned, "Goin' on for decades. That's the level of discipline aroun' here. Speak up, and the Union will thrash you to death! Don't take the class and again, the Union will gun you down!"

"It's actually a good thing," another piped up, happy to eradicate John's ignorance about the complicacies of St. Bart's, "That way, the ones working on research and projects can spend more time while the labs and libraries are open for them. They don't have to take the stress of the routine."

"Well, not really good, those ones who don't like enjoyin'," said another, taking a large bite of a buttered scone, "we need to come to classes because of them otherwise they end up complaining to the Union. And the Union simply loves torturing the teachers, don't they?"

No one saw the tension in John's shoulders releasing. Even John didn't realise that immediately.

"That's why we've got the SBUTA, Dr. Cameron," Dr. Wilde said good-naturedly. "The Union can't do whatever it pleases. Speaking of which, there was this article in the Union newsletter. . ."

"Don't look so peaky, Watson," Abbott lowered his voice so that mostly John could hear him, "save it for later."

John blinked, "Pardon?"

"Holmes is sure to be there in your class. He isn't the sort who likes a good party."

John fought over the various responses that he could give, that didn't give away everything that he was beginning to have for Sherlock. As if John needed someone to inform him about that. But before he could say—or do—anything, another interrupted.

"He's got Holmes?"

"And hasn't run away screaming yet, like the last year with Boone," Abbott replied with a chuckle. John gave them all a weak smile, all of who looked at him with a newfound respect now. He wanted to say something in Sherlock's defence; he wasn't that bad of a bloke after all—but then, he was worse.

John bit into his sandwich to avoid replying as the rest of his colleagues found another topic to talk about—Holmes.

 

* * *

 

"How much time left, sir?" Molly's voice came out of nowhere. Sherlock finished working out the last question, went through the OMR sheet, and then spoke, in perfect sync with Simpson as he peered into his watch.

"Fifteen more minutes," Simpson and Sherlock drawled together as the former shot Molly a look that very well said _write all you like, I will see about your grades even though this is MCQs_. After that, Simpson added a grave "and ticking" after his words. Sherlock flashed an entirely insincere smile at the professor who had deigned to come to room number M07 as a humble invigilator wasting his precious time instead of tyrannising everyone with the permanent HoD post he held, probably just to ensure that Sherlock did not attempt any unfair means during his tests.

Or that's what Sherlock thought at least.

Oh please! It was only the internals. It didn't even make a difference, even if worst came to worst.

"Oh yes please," Simpson's voice boomed out of nowhere and the entire class, who were cheating from one another's papers, turned their heads in the direction of the speaker, "If you have to look into your neighbour's paper, go right ahead. Kindly be a little clandestine about it."

The class burst into laughter at the embarrassed offender. Even Sherlock smirked at that. He would've liked Simpson, if only he wasn't such a stuck-up old man obsessed with discipline even in university and if only he didn't destroy those who opposed him.

"Yes, yes, copy and cheat all you like, ladies and gentlemen," Simpson declared to everyone in general, "I'll see you all laughing during your projects and your vivas. And your trimester examinations."

At this, everyone went deadly quiet and resumed writing steadfastly.

Sherlock waited in his seat, impatient at his best and watching Molly furiously writing down the answers to the last three questions, which were usually subjective than MCQ. Simpson was parading around in the class, arms tucked behind his back and his two eyes on every other inhabitant of hall number M07. The senile had not passed around the attendance sheet yet, and it was the only thing still keeping Sherlock in his seat. It was truly a wonder why the always-so-strict-about-discipline professor was being so liberal today. Furtive whispers echoed around him, he heard several dozens of "Oi, Holmes" and "Molly, here!" and several others' names around them, but he paid no attention. Molly always looked conflicted when someone called her during a test. Sherlock always tried to make her understand that people were just taking advantage of her timidity and that she shouldn't give an arse about what they said or did, but she never really paid him any heed.

"Ten more minutes," Simpson declared, "those who've finished," at this, he pointedly looked at Sherlock, "may sign their attendance and leave rather than sit and prompt their friends."

Sherlock looked down at his paper, his eyes tracing out the black bubbles and the subjective answer script. With almost practiced precision, he slid off his chair and handed his paper to Dr. Simpson, unable to keep a smirk off his face. The two men gazed into each others' eyes like a pair of hungry lions before claiming their prey, and then Simpson abruptly turned away and put the paper face-down on the teachers' desk.

"The attendance," he reminded him. Sherlock wordlessly signed against his roll number and tucked in his half-chewed pen in his bag.

"May I leave, sir?"

Simpson glanced down at the sheet and spoke in his blandest, loathed-est voice, "Write down the roll numbers of those who sat next to you."

Sherlock stared at the man wordlessly, his mouth a bit open. Oh. . . clever, so that was why Simpson was being so liberal! He could only imagine the horror of those who would come to know of it at the end of the test.

With an almost concealed smirk, he wrote down Molly's and another nondescript girl's roll number, "May I go _now_ , sir?"

Simpson eyed Molly, and then Sherlock. He was still probably planning revenge against Sherlock for having played that prank around the Dean, "By all means."

Sherlock took a last look at the rest of his year mates, some of them who were gaping open-mouthed upon seeing Sherlock having finished the extremely difficult test well before time. There were some hostile looks exchanged, some _God, what does he think of himself_ looks. Sherlock walked out of the classroom unhurriedly just to waste five more minutes of their useless time. The one con of finishing the test earlier was that he had to wait outside for Molly to finish her test. It was her turn to drive them today, and seeing as she was such a "talented" driver, Sherlock did not want to do anything that set her off, including playing truant on her. She could be awfully annoying when she was, for the lack of a better word, annoyed.

Sherlock settled against the staircase in a cosy spot, drowning water down his throat and counting how many veins were newly visible around the knuckles of his right hand. Waiting was tedious, oh so very tedious. His mind filled up with infinite possibilities of where he could go, what he could be doing, but none of them seemed interesting at that point. He would have to do the lab work eventually, so there was no point in going there. The library building was so far away, and plus the car keys were with Molly.

Sherlock pondered over his choices. Sometimes it struck him that he was almost a nerd. There was only one other thing in his life that had no relation with science, in a manner of speaking. And that had rejected him so easily.

Finally, he could hear the murmuring start, until it became a low sound of a gathering talking with some idiots shouting sometimes. Simpson was collecting papers then. Good, at least there was only a few more minutes to nothingness.

Then Simpson came out and shot past Sherlock without so much as a look at him. Then his year mates began to trickle out. First were the mushy couples, holding hands, some kissing, some falling over their steady, the sensible ones talking in low voices to avoid attention, the drama queens practically shouting so that everybody knew that they were with their first boyfriends. Then came the girls, some silent, mostly weeping about the writing-the-neighbours'-roll-numbers-thing, some flirting, followed by the boys who liked lending shoulders in a false show of chivalry and most of them bitching about what a wanker Simpson and his paper were.

The former groups passed him by without much comment, but the bitch-boys accosted him, telling him what an utter prick, ponce, bastard, shit, etc he was, not showing his paper to others, to his "mates". Sherlock wanted to scoff at them, who thought that they were his mates at their convenience. But he ignored them and waited quietly in a corner until Molly came out one of the last, trying to discuss the paper with someone who did not want to forget the hallowed experience of the last of their first internals tests. She was always the last to come out after a test, always wanting more and more time to go over and to make sure that she hadn't made any stupid mistakes.

She acknowledged him by cocking an eyebrow, and instantly pushed the question paper right under his nose.

"Tell me the answer to this one, Sherlock, please? I know you got it right, you always get everything right. Why can't I be intelligent like you? God, I shouldn't have fallen asleep last night!" she complained, "I could've got this question. And this one too! If only there was some pill or anything which I could take not to sleep for some time. Like some anti-sleeping pills."

"There is," Sherlock drawled, pushing the paper away, "it's called coffee."

She rolled her eyes as they descended down the steps, "Right, coffee. Or those coffee toffee cheesecakes. But excess caffeine makes one drowsy."

"You can't be talking about coffee of all things."

Molly looked taken aback for a moment, "Oh. . . right. Sorry, I got carried. . . away. . ."

Sherlock squinted at her, "You didn't say anything offending. You need not be selling sorrys to everyone just to show others that you are polite and not a threat."

She let out a bitter laugh that sounded nothing like a laugh, "Maybe I say them because I expect the other person to be equally polite to me."

Sherlock sighed an all-suffering sigh, "The thought had occurred."

"Love thy neighbour as thyself, yeah?" Molly smirked, but Sherlock put her down in an instant with a dominating "don't be too smart, Molly." She subdued instantly with an inaudible apology.

"You know. . ." she ventured tentatively, "you really shouldn't be like that."

Sherlock frowned, "Like what?"

"You know. . ." she tried to appear small, "make people—you know—resent you. I—I know you don't do it on purpose, but sometimes. . . well, erm—it looks like—you do."

"Do what?" Sherlock demanded.

"You know, offending people. You should have some on your side, even if you don't like them," Molly said sheepishly, "tell them a few answers during the test and they'll owe you favours."

"Are you hungry?" he dismissed it as they exited the building and made their way towards the cafeteria through the shortcut. Molly always lost her way about it, but not with Sherlock, who knew St. Bart's like the anatomy of the human body.

"I'm always hungry after a tes—" she sighed and began, but stopped abruptly as her expression changed in a second. It took Sherlock to only look ahead to find out why. His heart became a gooey messy swollen organ in his chest falling into the pit of his stomach and trying to find its way right up until it could no longer figure out which way was up or down.

Right outside the PG Science, Professor Watson was making his way along with a couple of students walking along with him, or more like following him and failing to keep up with the man who wanted nothing more than to forget about students and spend his free recess hour peacefully.

Sherlock felt an irrational flare of jealousy lick up his spine upon seeing that people, ordinary people were surrounding that man, sharing the same air as him, while he had to be away, and could see him only in class.

"—but you cannot make this assumption," he was saying almost dismissively, "if you were to assume that the average decay rate. . ." he trailed off. It took Sherlock some more moments to realise why.

For a second, Professor Watson's eyes locked onto his, and he blinked and closed his mouth. Sherlock knew he had stopped in his tracks too, for Molly tugged at his sleeve hard. Sherlock pretended to be looking elsewhere but in the meantime, Molly had interlaced her fingers in his—an action that would've felt uncomfortably intimate and possessive to someone else—and walked on almost stomping the feet with the ground. Sherlock could tell that the man's face fell at how domineering Molly was acting. He himself was surprised by her initiative.

Sherlock, for once, did not drop that charade as he let himself be towed by her forcefully. He heard a gentle voice continue after the hiatus it had gone into, "So as I was saying. . ."

He and Molly turned around the corner and stopped and finally Sherlock allowed himself to breathe. He was more than aware of Molly's presence beside him and in times like these, he really preferred his privacy than a girl who had a sugary euphemism for every goddamned thing in the world.

"Are you alright?" Molly ventured tentatively. Sherlock blinked and straightened up, brushing off the dust from his shirt proudly.

She looked understanding, but Sherlock managed a roll of eyes that he didn't even mean, "What the hell was that?! You made me look like an emo in front of a guy who—!" Sherlock felt foolish, first at having misinterpreted the Professor Watson's attentions, and secondly at Molly thinking that he was heartbroken or something when he clearly wasn't. It was no big deal.

"You're an idiot if you think I would do such a trite and cheap thing as making him jealous. I. . . was wrong, that's it," Sherlock felt more embarrassed at his mistake than being made a emo by his romantic best friend in front of Professor John Watson, "it can happen. Sometimes. . . Rarely, I hope."

"Whatever, it was worth the look on his face," said Molly shrugging, and hiding an impish grin that Sherlock saw anyway. Feeling like a sensible person for the first time, Sherlock heaved an all-suffering sigh and walked on, leaving Molly behind.

"Sherlock," she called behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides, "wait for me!"

 

* * *

 

John knew he had acted like a child.

He couldn't think of anything else that whole day as he walked back to the bus stop with Abbott. He kept on replaying the scene in front of UG Sciences a million times in his head, the one moment when Sherlock had met his eyes and John, in the hope of seeing something in the boy that made him feel even remotely desired by someone like him, kept playing it just to gauge Sherlock's feelings, if any. John wasn't sure what Sherlock would feel, apart from being spurned and aggravated by rejection.

But every time he played the scene over in his head, Ms. Hooper kept coming between them. Of course she would. She had perhaps found out that her boyfriend had almost cheated on her and John knew he had lost Ms. Hooper's cooperation during class. She'd never interact with John properly now, let alone Sherlock. John felt a slight twinge inside his chest at the thought of coming between a famous couple like them.

At least he had turned his offer for trysts down. At least his conscience was clear.

At least he could've turned Sherlock down in a less embarrassing way. Maybe explained to him that he really shouldn't taint a professional relationship with sex, more so with perhaps the straightest professor in the world.

He knew he was fooling himself.

Abbott, unbeknownst, tried to involve him in what was more like a one-sided conversation, telling him about how his day had been and how he hated his students (Everybody does, right?) Worst of all, he went on about Sherlock's tales and the highlights of his scathing comments from all week in an attempt to humour John.

John sometimes supposed that Sherlock had a brilliant career as a screenplay writer or a dialogue artist, with that amount of witty punchlines in his mind.

He tried not to remember the hurt in his eyes as he left the class, the slouched shoulders of dejection. He was a young boy, John mused, and it wasn't his fault that he had mistaken his professor's "intellectual" interest in him for something else. It was extremely harsh and very mean to treat him like that. John knew why he had lashed out like that. He had never thought that Sherlock wasn't interested in being _friends_ with him. Oh course, why would someone like Sherlock think of someone as ordinary as him as anything like friends? He only wanted sex and a bit of professor on the side. He had only begun to like Sherlock, look forward to his little visits and somehow what Sherlock did crippled John from every thinking about him in a platonic way.

But it still wasn't very prudent to reject a young boy like that. He had lost control of himself with Sherlock so uncomfortably close and intimate.

Young boy. John was the one who had run away instead of making him understand that he really shouldn't be so cheeky with his professor. He was supposed to be the mature adult here, and yet he had stormed off when it had been time to act like one.

Back in the bus, he tried to think why Sherlock was doing whatever he was trying to do. Why he was being extra disrespectful in class. In one of the last assignments, Sherlock had actually written 'NULL' over all the worksheet in the weekly test except for the last two questions, as if they were the only ones which mattered.

A small part of Sherlock was probably upset.

John decided that he would have to stop keeping two questions especially for Sherlock at the end.

"Hey, professor, happy birthday," Jeanette greeted him with a quick kiss as he entered his flat. John cast his eyes over the whole place, his mouth slightly ajar. The sitting room was a complete, utter mess. She had taken the liberty to move in. John was starting to see where this was going. Why she had patched things up.

"What're you doing?" asked John, putting his bag down and then looking her up from head to toe. Her apron had chocolate stains all over it, "And stop calling me professor," said he. It reminded him of a certain someone way too much.

Jeanette pouted her lips. "I moved in, stupid!" said she, smacking his head lightly with the stirrer. John reeled backwards, disgusted as he felt egg yolk and butter stick to his hair, "You look so cute when you make that face. And look, I'm making a cake for you. Special birthday surprise."

John tried his best not to frown at that as he felt for his left shoulder, a little stiff from carrying the heavy bag around as he settled down on the couch. He didn't like being called cute. Somehow, being cute equalled to being short in John's subconscious mind, something he was incredibly self-conscious about.

Nevertheless it was nice, seeing that someone remembered his birthday, however childish that sounded like. Sherlock would agree on that.

Not Sherlock again.

"You opening a chocolate factory too anytime soon?" he asked, clearing his throat.

Jeanette threw him a smirk as John smelled the delicious aroma of chocolate from the kitchen, "Hmm, I might. For you. You remember that time, in Dublin?"

John did. He had gone for some sort of a convention thing and she was his plus-one. It was their third time, and he had made love to her all over the kitchen table, smearing her with chocolate and licking it away. Somehow, something that had felt very erotic at that time only served to disgust him a little now. Jeanette came over to him, and settled between his legs, kissing him deeply, plying his mouth open. . . it did feel good. So good.

There. He had a girlfriend who was gorgeous and smart and funny. He didn't need Holmes. He wasn't gay. He hadn't turned gay, if that was even possible.

John tried to retract his mouth away, "Jeanette, not today please—"

But she kept kissing him, while her fingers worked the buttons of his shirt off, her fingers trailing against his chest. Not being able to resist, John pulled her towards him, kissing her back passionately as he undid and threw away the apron. She worked her way to his neck, biting and kissing the vulnerable skin there, while massaging his half-hard clothed erection. John closed his eyes, leaning into her touch and exhaling deeply, "Oh, Go—Ugh. . . Sher—oh, god—lock, stop. . . I'm your. . . fucking tea—oh—cher. . ."

Jeanette stopped immediately, causing John to completely lose it.

"What happened?" he asked breathlessly.

"What did you say?" she asked, her eyes squinting on him, refusing John's touch as she slid off him. John's half-shut mind frowned, not being able to understand what 'Sher—oh, god—lock' was. He sat there, staring vacantly into her eyes for a few moments. The room seemed small, stuffy, and way too crowded. Finally, he got up, muttering an unintelligible apology to her, and dashed inside to his room, to smack his head so that he could at least get a grip on what was happening to him. Finally, not being able to clear his mind, he did the one thing that usually felt like salvation, making impossible papers for the senior years, and imagining their sorry faces. He had been thinking about Holmes way too much, and John didn't want to admit, but it did get a little beyond the general description of "intellectual".

He needed to be civil with Holmes again.

 

* * *

 

The next time Sherlock arrived in the class—sans Molly—he found the girl in question already there in the class sitting on the tables with some of her girl friends. In a bizarre turn of events, Molly's friends hadn't really abandoned her, although it was the more dorky ones who were still in the classroom. Most of the others were probably hanging out in the clubs near the Union building or near the gym. As expected, there was no one teaching in the class. There seemed to be some electronic hip-hop song. . . thing playing—that Eminem thing, perhaps—along with the riffs of some nondescript rock song on an electric guitar that somebody was playing. No place better than a classroom, Sherlock thought sarcastically.

Sherlock entered the classroom and got a better view of the people there.

They had made a clearing in front of the board, swept the teachers' desk and chair away in a corner. A couple of guys were practising some break dance moves—Sherlock had to admit that they were good, if unoriginal. In a corner, there was a group singing some song that was supposed to be happy and working wonders to lift the mood, but they were continuously missing the beat and taking arbitrary scales for themselves, making the song all the more depressing to Sherlock.

". . . the club's free the next-to-next Tuesday, but shouldn't we have it on Friday? I don't feel like showing up for classes right after the freshers. . ."

The freshers.

So that's why all this was going on.

So all of them were presenting a dance—not Eminem, the voice wasn't angry and didn't swear like a sailor, maybe that Gaga person, no, she was a woman and was in the pop genre—and preparing for the freshers and had turned the lecture hall into a multipurpose room for singing and dancing and chatting and all sorts of people-y things.

No classes.

Because students would barricade the door and not let the teacher enter, and besides there was no professor stupid enough to come snooping by, not right two weeks before the much awaited freshers party, the senior batches' only excuse for hazing virgin freshers. Sherlock remembered his, and just how he had made himself a target during the freshers' party itself. He couldn't help it back then. It had been very tempting, standing out and answering back.

Mycroft had forgotten his biweekly visit because of his weekly weight gain, and now, no classes. How much better could this day get, Sherlock thought, feeling like he had just discovered alien DNA in his blood.

Molly caught his eye and smiled politely, and then resumed her talking with her friends. Sherlock had a feeling that he won't be able to have her attention today. Besides, there were no lectures or seminars today. He might as well go back. Molly had her own car, and Sherlock had his own today.

". . . call Sherlock, hey Sherlock!" he heard some of the girls taking his name. He snapped his head towards them, to see that they were actually calling him. By name. And not Holmes. Sherlock had a hunch that it had little to do with Molly and everything to do with the freshers party.

Reluctantly, he made his way to the group of unworthy people Molly called her "friends". Sherlock had in fact written an essay on suppressed hatred in close proximity based entirely on her friends, but in hindsight, he thought he shouldn't tell Molly about that one.

Sherlock plopped down beside Molly and fidgeted awkwardly, "So. . . well. . ." he began as a couple of girls giggled not-so-surreptitiously and took his reluctance to sit with girls and be treated as Molly's best girl friend (which he wasn't at all, thank you very much, he was a guy, not a girl) as his discomfort and that only made him want to stare them down into discomfort.

"Sherlock, we're doing the budget for the party," one of them with glasses permanently fixed up her nose declared pompously. Words like "Mycroft's soul mate" floated in Sherlock's head. She _looked_ so boring—let alone her words—that Sherlock did not bother to even try and deduce her. She wore a vintage plaid kilt that did not compliment her olive-tanned skin at all,  unlike she wanted to believe. She had better luck with her hair and her nails, though.

At that point, Sherlock realised why Molly thought of him as her girl friend.

"At this point, we've got the venue from five thirty to ten thirty; that's the limit. Happy hour," she coughed sophisticatedly at this point to cover the real meaning of 'happy hour', "is from seven to nine thirty, and then announcing Mr and Ms Fresher. We've got the DJ and the club's lighting. . ."

And after that, Sherlock tuned out. He wasn't even going to be there for the freshers. There would be people. And immaturity. Not that he wasn't a very example of one. The freshers' party was only an pathetic excuse for "light hazing" during the happy hour as the seniors dubbed it. He didn't need a party to make people feel vulnerable or embarrassed. He was capable of doing that without any aid.

". . . Sherlock? _Sherlock_?" Molly's shrill voice came, "Are you even listening to what I'm saying?"

Sherlock gave a start that he hoped was imperceptible to others. Nevertheless, he still let out a yawn to cover that up.

"You know, if you're not interested," one of them said coldly, "you should leave."

Sherlock resisted the urge to roll his eyes. As if he had volunteered. But before he could say anything that was even remotely cutting, Molly began to apologise for him like the good girl she was. Sherlock refrained from heaving a sigh, "Carry on."

And Sherlock phased out again. What was he even doing here? In university? With his life? He felt like a caged bird who had to put up with social tediousness every now and then. He liked university. Yes, perhaps more than he had liked his secondary school, seeing as most of the time he _wasn't_ in secondary school. He should've been out exploring. Seeing the world for himself. He sometimes wished he had scored so many hit-offs that his parents and his brother would've given up, deeming him a lost cause.

That was unlikely, seeing the way his mother's face lit up whenever he went back to Lincolnshire during Christmases.

Most of the time, Sherlock fantasised about freedom. What would that be like? Without having Molly and perhaps his brother's omnipresent shadow trailing him everywhere? Without having to study? Without having a routine? Having his head up the clouds instead of inside a book?

At least St. Bart's didn't have a formal routine, except for whatever schedule he had for the day.

An eerie silence fell over the hall, forcing Sherlock out of his thoughts and to look up towards the door.

"Sir, please, can we postpone this class after Friday?" some of the girls—flirtatiously, Sherlock would say—barricaded the offender, obviously male, with wide doe-like eyes and pouts that were supposed to be pallbearers of cuteness.

"No way," one of the girls in front of Sherlock bemoaned, "No classes, please! I haven't completed that assignment yet."

"You mean the one that he handed out two weeks ago," another piped up, "The due-date's gone for, like, forever, Stace!"

"Oh my god, I haven't given in any of my quizzes yet!"

"Quizzes don't count in the final grade, relax!"

Sherlock remembered too. He had all his assignments pending. He hadn't felt like completing any. Not that he ever felt like. He sometimes wished he was a girl so that he could bat his eyelashes at his instructors too and get out of such trite things.

"Please, sir. We have the freshers' party this week." The tirade continued at the door, followed by giggles.

"If he's so keen to teach, then he could tutor _me_ ," the girl next to Molly simpered and their group broke into laughs again.

"Yes, yes, I know, I've been informed by our class representative. I'm not here for the lesson. I—I—just need to—" came the extremely embarrassed voice. Sherlock craned his neck and stuck out his head towards the door. He knew that voice extremely well, and couldn't have expected any other professor coming at this time. And couldn't have expected the girls to go so haywire around anybody else.

Professor Watson stopped his protest and pursed his lips together as soon as he saw Sherlock looking straight at him. Sherlock couldn't really blame the man. Logically speaking, it was nothing of the professor's fault that Sherlock had mistaken his oh-so-chaste intentions. He thought he could forgive the man. He wasn't particularly mad. If anything, he doubted whether the two of them could ever be as comfortable as they used to be, now that Sherlock had voiced his intentions so clearly.

The man looked at Sherlock expectantly, pleading to be rescued from the preening, winking girls. Sherlock had to resist the urge to laugh at the helpless man. Good, he deserved that.

"—Don't worry, boys and girls. I just need to—well, Mr. Holmes!" Professor Watson called out, his voice carrying something akin to urgency. Sherlock fought had to keep back a triumphant smile. Almost certainly, Dr. Watson was done with being noble and all around moral teacher. He didn't know what he was happier about, at finally managing to win and proving himself right, or at finally getting to make out with his professor.

He'd say that it was the latter, but then he'd be lying.

"Yes, sir?" Sherlock couldn't keep it in his voice. It was only a matter of time and Dr. Watson had come right back. Sherlock knew with a conviction that. . .

"Come outside, please, since I will not be allowed to speak here," he said tetchily. There was something incredibly defensive in his manner, but Sherlock did not bother to process that. He had finally won, he had been right all along and that was all that mattered.

He felt like giving the girls a smug smirk, that he was the one getting their beloved Professor Johnny instead of their desperate selves. That was until one of the guys uttered 'teacher's pet' behind his back that Sherlock resisted with a silent chuckle.

"Yes, sir," he said, cocking an eyebrow at a worried Molly as a goodbye. Of course, John wanted privacy. Good enough. Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't anyone?

Triumph surging through his veins, Sherlock slung his bookbag over his shoulder. He began mapping out various make-out points, locked closets, unused classrooms, washrooms, stairwells, anywhere. He knew the campus like no one else. There were so many potential places to get laid that—

"Come along then," the man said stiffly and Sherlock found himself following him until they reached Abandoned Stairwell #1 in Sherlock's mind map. The curve of Dr. Watson's shoulder was stiff, extremely so, and Sherlock realised that the man was nervous. Well, now that he was here, he was a little nervous too, seeing as he didn't have conscious experience with sex. He thought whether he should make the first move and thought about what he should do. . .

"Since I am not going to wait till the freshers' to get over," Dr. Watson began as soon as Sherlock said, "So we'll just go in—"

There was an awkward pause as they looked at each other with identical expressions on their face. Dr. Watson blinked at him, and cleared his throat, suddenly interested in his feet. Sherlock was beginning to see that he had made a grave miscalculation. Again.

"I'll speak first," Dr. Watson said, tucking his arms behind his back and looking Sherlock in the eye, "Since I'm not going to wait for the freshers to get over to return these," he patted his bookbag, "I'll give it to you now, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock barely found his voice, his mouth felt so dry. The second time he was proved wrong, by the same man, over the same thing. It was just. . . unthinkable. He merely blinked, his face completely blank.

Dr. Watson pulled out some files and handed Sherlock his, "Your last assignment. See the lovely 'NULL' written all over it by you?"

Sherlock nodded numbly, unable to recover from the shock of being wrong again. On a normal day he would've rolled his eyes and heaved an exaggerated sigh. There was an unfamiliar tetchiness to the professor's voice. He felt almost afraid of Sherlock and was trying not to show it by bringing in an unusual viciousness in his voice.

"Well, I . . . ahem, need actual content in here instead of a 'NULL', Mr. Holmes," John said sternly, but avoiding his eye,  "Otherwise I'm afraid I will not be able to assess you on this. Every assignment counts, yeah? So make sure I have it by Thursday. With proper analysis done and valid, _justified_ reasons to back it up. And no copying, please. You will find that what I lack in cleverness, as you have put it so many times, I make up for in an excellent memory."

Sherlock didn't nod, just kept watching the man, the extremely unpredictable man. He finally found his voice, but it came out as hoarse. Dr. Watson looked up at once as he cleared his throat daintily, "Um, sir. . . should I, erm. . . come and give this to you in your office when I'm done with this?"

Dr. Watson blinked and looked like he was about to say yes, but then he sighed and dug out his schedule, "Not in the office, please," it actually sounded like a plea, and Sherlock, for one second wondered whether he really was victimising the man, "Erm, I'll be there in lab 3 ten thirty to twelve thirty on Thursday. You can give it to me then."

Sherlock groaned inwardly. He had scared the prude off. He was never going to have a chance with that man, not after blowing off said chance with impatience and overconfidence.

"Erm. . ." Dr. Watson shuffled to his feet, still looking awkwardly at Sherlock, "You were saying something. . .?"

For a moment, Sherlock was tempted to say something, anything, persuade him again. Even if his persuasion and his meagre attempts at planned seduction had certainly not worked their charm on Dr. Watson, he couldn't say that he hadn't enjoyed the other man's company. Without a word, he shook his head, swallowed his impending black mood and tucked his dramatic assignment in it to leave Dr. Watson standing there awkwardly as he made his way towards the room.

He knew that Dr. Watson would still be standing there, still looking at Sherlock, pretending to be an adult and a prude and grave about how Sherlock should concentrate on his academics. Sherlock didn't know what he was gloomier about, at permanently screwing up his interactions a man who was beginning to consider him—of all people—a friend, or at not getting to make out with everyone's new favourite professor.

He'd say that it was the latter, but then he'd be lying.

 

* * *

 

Having nothing better to do, Sherlock decided to stay in the department library and complete the assignment, seeing as in his last assignment, he had been bad-tempered enough to take a photocopy of Molly's introduction and acknowledgements page and then write 'NULL' over the next pages. Any other professor would've given him a nice U for that without a second gleeful thought. The little prude that Dr. Watson was, doing everybody a world of good like a proper UNICEF worker, wanted Sherlock to actually do the assignment. And so, for once, Sherlock acquiesced and settled down to work on it. It was a challenging little thing, absolutely required anyone to spend some time in the labs working on it because he wasn't going to dig out his own spinal cord for that.

He groaned in his hands, bemoaning over his butchered free time. For free time, he'd have to complete the assignment, to complete the assignment, he'd have to go to the labs, and to go to the labs, he'd have to get up. He should've just pushed the work on Molly.

The couple across him, working on a laptop looked at him as if he were an overgrown insect. Sherlock did not glare back.

He got over it, cursing himself as he balanced the heavy books on his arm. He collected his reading card and made it out of the library. it was Thursday, the last day for submission. It was eleven now and he wasn't sure he wanted to go into the lab now. Watson would be there, and Sherlock wasn't sure if he wanted to see him again.

Sherlock shook himself. So what if Watson was there? He didn't mean anything. He was a prude. Just a stuck-up prude like Simpson.

He made his way to Dental Sciences for the lab, avoiding peeping into the Dean of Students' car. Without so much as a look at the instructor's desk, where Dr. Watson was seated, he took out his study materials, his laptop and set down to work.

Eventually, he could feel the presence beside him. Watson had left his work and come over to join him, to see over his work maybe. As if he needed that. Sherlock wasn't much for fancy, but he could actually sense something radiating from the teacher. The tread of footfalls obviously were tense and mediated, but there was a newfound boldness. He genuinely felt distrustful of the man, the one who could prove him wrong every time and he didn't want to feel the swooping sensation whenever he was wrong.

And then—

"Is that your assignment?" Dr. Watson asked, bending down to read the content in Sherlock's laptop.

 _Obviously._ "Hmm."

"I thought. . . you'd be done by now."

 _You think?_ "I started today."

There was an awkward pause, and Sherlock's eyes darted sideways when he heard the bench near him give a creak as Dr. Watson settled beside him, body completely facing him. Sherlock, for his part, abandoned his work to turn to look at him. For a moment, Dr. Watson—John, his name was John. What a commonplace name. He'd never make a good pirate with that name—gazed at him, and Sherlock stared right back challengingly. His gaze accidently dropped to Dr. Watson's—John's—lips, and that seemed to startle the other man right out of his daze with a sharp clear of his throat that echoed in the empty lab.

Empty, Sherlock noted. They were alone. Again. He felt his heart pounding in his chest and his lips glued together when he opened his mouth.

"Ahem—you want to say something?" Sherlock asked coldly, trying to come across as dismissive.

Dr. Watson licked his lips and took off his glasses, pointing at the laptop screen with them, "No, I just. . . erm, I gave it to you the previous week. I personally came to the class and. . ."

"You needn't have come," Sherlock heaved a sigh and continued with typing and occasionally looking up the model, making his observations, "Give me a U, I don't care. Only two more years here and then I'll be gone." Free as a bird. Free to explore.

Dr. Watson nodded, taking the new bit of information in and stayed quiet as Sherlock continued to work, typing away at a furious speed. After what seemed like minutes, Dr. Watson spoke.

"You've got potential, Sherlock," he said in a disappointed tone, and Sherlock snapped out of it upon hearing his name. He hadn't realised it first when he had asked Dr. Watson to call him Sherlock, but there was something incredibly intimate about that, "I'd hate it if you threw something like that," he gestured to Sherlock in general, "away by being mad at an old man like me. I'd hate myself for that."

Sherlock felt confused by Professor Watson's frankness, at what he was implying. There was nothing he could say to something like that. Age wasn't much of a barrier for Sherlock.

"You're not old," he retorted, "You're hardly thirty."

Dr. Watson barked out a laugh and Sherlock gave him a weak smile when he realised that he was probably not making fun of him, "That's true, innit?" unconsciously, he leaned in closer, "I celebrated my 29th birthday some days ago. . . and I have no idea why I'm telling you this."

Sherlock straightened up at that, "Oh. . . happy, erm. . . birthday then?" he tried uncertainly.

Dr. Watson chuckled, shaking his head and Sherlock back-pedalled furiously, "I—it's what people say, don't they?" he spoke quickly, "Happy birthday and many returns something. . .?"

He relaxed and Sherlock saw that his face had an entirely different aura. He realised for a moment that he was not seeing Dr. Watson, his professor. He was just seeing John. He smiled placatingly, wanting to reach out for his hand but he refrained. He had to be careful with Dr. Watson. Even more with the John individual in him, the singular man with a most non-singular name.

"Do you need my help? Doing this, I mean?" Dr. Watson interjected too quickly, "Not what—erm, you. . ."

This time, seeing as Dr. Watson wouldn't appreciate Sherlock flirting, he kept it chaste, "I don't need your help."

Somehow, he said something wrong, because Dr. Watson's face fell and he nodded briskly, "Of course, Sherl—Mr. Holmes," he cleared his throat and wore his glasses back like battle armour, "I'll leave you to it."

Sherlock frowned and narrowed his eyes in confusion. Somewhere, he felt like he had to say something. Maybe he could accept his offer for a truce, "Or maybe I—"

"No, it's okay," Dr. Watson said, all light leaving his face, "I know you don't."

With that, he left Sherlock wondering what he had done—or said—wrong. Without wasting any more time, Sherlock turned to work furiously on his laptop while one thought kept revolving in his mind. The poor man thought that he was old for Sherlock. Sherlock would show him that he wasn't. He would, surely. One day. Today, if he was lucky.

He quietly took out the printouts, stuffed them in a file and handed it over to Dr. Watson, observing the John individual in him all the while. Little fascinating quirks set him apart from any other person, the way his mouth unconsciously hung open when he was thinking, the way he skimmed through first and then read only what he felt was relevant, the permanent stiffness in his shoulders. Sherlock felt like he was seeing someone else entirely. He had been going after the professor like the idiot he was when there was this unique individual sitting in front of him, hidden behind his glasses and the knot of his tie. Till now, Sherlock had seen how the man changed when he was with him but he had never really bothered to go deep, see the man behind Dr. Watson. And why would he have? His own intentions were shallow enough.

"Are you going to do it now?" Sherlock asked.

"Do what?" Dr. Watson asked, not looking up from the file.

"Grading. Save it for more boring times."

Dr. Watson paused, and Sherlock wondered whether he had been impatient. Again. When he looked up, his expression was unreadable.

"I'm simply doing my work," he cleared his throat, "You can leave if you want."

Sherlock pursed his lips, "So, you'll just. . . sit here and do boring things?"

"What you call 'boring' is what I'm being paid for, Mr. Holmes," John explained patiently, continuing to read the little document even if Sherlock hadn't written much, "so, I don't seem to have a choice."

"You do," Sherlock said, sitting down in the chair in front of him, "you just need to consider it."

Dr. Watson blinked, focussing his glare on Sherlock, after which, "Are you trying to psychoanalyse me, Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock sighed, "I do not concern myself with something as absurd as the Freudian concept of psychoanalysis, professor, considering that even though Freud was right up to a level, the tenets upon which he has based the entire theory of the subject are deeply flawed and ancient."

Dr. Watson shook his head and spoke in his blandest voice, "You don't get a light-hearted statement, do you?"

. . . _Oh!_ "My apologies."

He could tell that even though Dr. Watson seemed to be glaring at him, there was an almost imperceptible twitch to his lips. He was amused. Sherlock found himself fighting tooth and nail to hide a smirk.

"I think I'll take your leave, sir," Sherlock nodded and he imagined just a tinge of uncertainty in Dr. Watson's eyes before he looked down.

"I'll give this back to you when the regular schedule starts again."

"Keep it," Sherlock smirked, "You might need it more."

Dr. Watson stood up as Sherlock gathered his things, "I will return it. Don't worry."

"I wasn't worried."

"Please don't start behaving like that again, Mr. Holmes," Dr. Watson's less-than-amiable voice now rang out, focussing Sherlock's attention back, and Sherlock felt like he was going to get a lecture again. He had seen the man that existed behind the facade of Professor Watson. Why couldn't John see the Sherlock behind the mask of 'student' too?

"Look, I don't want to lecture you," Dr. Watson said at once, "but. . . kindly be serious about your place here in the university. Like you said, this," he motioned to the room in general and, Sherlock couldn't help but notice, to himself as well, "will be over in two more years. . ." he shook his head, "Hardly worth it."

Sherlock didn't say anything when he felt something move in his chest, fragile and tentative as the tiny inward curling of tissue paper that had just caught fire. He glanced at him and resumed packing as if he had said nothing and exited the lab. He could've said something ambiguous but he wasn't cruel to leave him hanging onto a thread of hope and dismay like that.

He heard his name being called and didn't look back. He wasn't going to respond to Mr. Holmes. He'd respond to only 'Sherlock'.

"Mr. Holmes!"

Sherlock whipped around. It was clear that the voice wasn't Dr. Watson's mellow one.

It was that of Dr. Hope, the Dean of Science Faculty coming in his direction, and from the look on his face, Sherlock knew that he was in big trouble, especially for pulling off that stunt with his suspension order. He briefly considered running off. . .

Dean Hope approached him, "I was just about to send for you. I'm afraid I can no longer turn turn a blind eye."

Sherlock gave an innocent look his best shot, and failed miserably.

"My office, now. I only have ten minutes to spare."

Sherlock knew he couldn't get out of this.


	7. Chapter 7

Sherlock claimed that he understood. He knew why Dr. Watson had said no. It was not lack of attraction, it was because the man was as ethical as the Pope, and because he was a little concerned about his career, and too concerned about Sherlock's future. He could see the proof for himself, as he sat in his flat, surrounded by notes and post-its regarding his Organic Chemistry project. According to logic, Dr. Watson must be interested in him. And yet, there was that tiny nagging sensation in the back of his head, the one that made him feel like that he was making it all up, that he was imagining it, mistaking the teacher's attentions for something else.

_The question is hypothetical and I'm not gay._

Nice way to avoid answering. Hypothetical question.

_I'm settling for the life of a professor!_

Sherlock suddenly found himself wondering what Dr. Watson had wanted to be when he was a kid. He looked like he was very content to be a teacher, given how serious he was about his pathetic job at the university.

"You did what?!" Molly looked dumbfounded when Sherlock simply told her about what he had done. She seemed appalled at his daring, "Sherlock, do you have any idea of what you have done? He's your professor! And you're lucky that he's decent enough—"

"Thank you for pointing out the knowledge that you, I, a hundred other students and surely my dear brother knows about."

"So, you just went and _asked him out_?! Who does that?"

They were meeting at Sherlock's flat to work their chemistry project out. Sherlock had an idea, but he wondered if it would be legal. At any rate, he had not yet discussed it with Molly, and he wasn't sure if she would approve.

"And there's ninety percent chance that he is straight. And he must be almost 30—"

"Twenty eight years, seven months and nine days," Sherlock interrupted, and Molly let out an exaggerated sigh.

"I'm going to pretend that you didn't hack into the university records to find that out."

"Not just pretend," Sherlock said brightly, showing her his laptop, "Want to see?"

"Sherlock, be serious about this. You're endangering his career. If not yourself, think about him."

"You think I don't know?" Sherlock stood up suddenly and approached her, "You think _I_ haven't thought it through. Me?"

Molly backed away, a little spooked. There were sometimes when Sherlock could be truly scary, and this was one of them, as he towered over her, his face still bland and full of thoughts while his body language assertive and dominant. Molly knew that Sherlock was particularly sensitive when it came to rejection, in fact he rejected people closest to him for the fear of rejection from them, but she really couldn't understand why Sherlock kept pressing Dr. Watson even after his constant rebuttal, why Sherlock didn't shirk away from the blatant rejection that he threw in his direction. Was he that special? In such a short time?

Sherlock messed his hair up, while adjusting them such that they didn't even graze the nape of his neck. His hair was getting longer again, and the only reason he wanted to keep it that way was because it annoyed a certain fat git who was upset over his receding hairline.

"Does everything have to be about someone's sexuality in here? He's straight, big deal! So what? Can't he just like me for who I am?"

Molly shook her head. She couldn't believe that they were arguing about this, despite how insanely sensible Sherlock's words were, "Even if that were the case, Sherlock, you insult him regularly in the class. What makes you think... look, I'm just concerned about you. I don't want to see you get hurt, okay?"

Sherlock wanted to respond with a cutting retort, but upon seeing the dark circles beneath her eyes and how tired she looked, he settled down in his armchair, and started jotting down all that he was going to need, while Molly poured over her textbook, an uncomfortable silence hanging over them.

* * *

A few miles away, John was just finishing up with marking all the papers. He opened up his email, browsing through them to read them up, especially one that was offering him professorship in some other university for 63.8K per year. He leaned back on the couch, and took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose and forced himself down to contemplation for some time before Jeanette arrived from work.

He was still grappling to come in terms with reality. He still couldn't believe his nerve. Holmes had actually asked him out. He marvelled at his guts, as he found his blood pressure skyrocketing at the thought. All he could do was thank God for enabling his mouth to refuse him politely.

But it was hard to just sit back and try and push him out of his thoughts, away from his mind. By God, it was hard to forget his face, and the questions that he had laid down in front of him, two very daunting questions. He knew he wasn't gay. He had never felt attracted to men. Never. Ever. Holmes was an exception, but then he had to be, hadn't he? John had never met anyone like him, so. . . different, refreshingly different and exciting, a complete departure from his otherwise mundane, boring life. What Holmes was now was what John, in many ways, used to be when he was in college, before his mum and dad had taken away his enlistment forms, and his dream to go and serve in the army. A Ph. D was way better, they had decided. By twenty-six, one would get out of university with a degree and then by twenty-eight, he would start as a professor in some university, undertake some research work, and make his way up. The stable, sedentary life (as Holmes had put it) behind a desk, nose buried in papers and eyes hidden behind glasses. Well, he didn't fucking want that.

He knew what he wanted, and he didn't have that. He could never have that, or mostly he wasn't going to let himself have that.

He replayed his conversation with Holmes back in his mind, and let out a hollow chuckle when he realised that he had used the exact same words with him, the exact same words which his parents had used to explain to him that the army wasn't a sensible decision. He hadn't managed to struggle out of it, but Holmes was stronger, stronger than he was at least. He had forgotten to be like that for some time. He had forgotten how to be in control. Had he been in control, Holmes would never even have dared to look up towards him for a second time, and now it was all just getting out of his hand. It just wasn't right. To fall for a student, and that too male, and that too during his first year of professorship itself was bad. He felt confused, about what he was, whether he even knew himself in the course of all that, feeling like a complete stranger to himself.

_If I wasn't your student, and if you weren't my professor, would you have gone out with me?_

Would he have?

John put his glasses back on and returned to another stack of test papers he had left for marking, but since he had nothing productive to do, he decided to finish with them. Halfway through, he came across a legible, spidery scrawl with the name Holmes, W on it. John looked away, not believing himself. His heart had started to beat faster just upon seeing his name. He ran his fingers over his paper, closing his eyes, imagining Holmes' hands moving across it, looking annoyed at having set such an easy and useless paper and glaring daggers at his professor for wasting his precious time, John remembered with a smile on his face. It was all he allowed himself to have of him. He swallowed at the imaginary feeling, and removed his hand, clasping it with his right hand to return to reality, to break that illusion.

The phone sitting on the table beside him rang loudly, startling him from his reverie. He glanced at the number, it was unknown. After a few minutes, he decided to take the call, "Hello?"

"Hey, professor," came a drawl from the other side. John's heart leapt up several non-existent metres in his chest when he heard that voice, "Sher—Holmes?"

He heard an exaggerated sigh on the other side of the phone, "Stick with one, _professor_. Either Holmes, or Sherlock, although I prefer the latter."

John smiled to himself, and all that he had made his mind up about was forgotten at once, "I'll go for Holmes, thank you very much."

There was silence on the other side, and John wondered whether Sherlock had hung up, wished to himself that he hadn't. He wished to himself that he had. Sherlock always did that, making him feel unsure of what he knew with all his heart, and yet somehow, affirmed it inside him.

"Mr. Holmes? Are you there?"

"Oh, Lord. Did you hear the dial tone?" Sherlock drawled.

"No... I suppose you're on line then."

"Hmm." And some more silence.

"So..." John began casually, carefully, not to give his student any new ways to flirt with him so cheekily. "How'd you get my number?"

"Pfft. I thought you would be interesting to talk to. How naive of me to think so! You're just as boring as your lectures."

John sighed, smiling and wanting to ask him whether this was his new flirting technique, "So, am I to assume that you'll be regularly calling my phone now?"

"Oh, please! I'm not as jobless as you think. As for your number, I—ahem—acquired your business card, ages ago."

Jeanette arrived, smiling at him sweetly. She looked really nice. He returned her smile weakly, trying to check her out only to find that Holmes had all of his attention. John swallowed and looked away, "Look, Mr. Holmes, I'm really busy now, so—"

"I bet it's something uninteresting," John could hear him smirking over the phone, "Tell me about it."

"John?" came Jeanette's voice from her room. John's palm went to hastily cover the mouthpiece, "Give me one minute, darling."

"Ooh, darling?" Sherlock cooed from the other end and it felt like a whip across his bare back, "Is that what you're calling your girlfriend? How pedestrian!"

"Sherl—Mr. Holmes, why have you called me?" he almost hissed into the phone.

"Erm... I was just hoping you had changed your mind about my proposition."

John found himself reddening but he managed to find his voice anyway. He knew what he wanted. He wasn't fickle-minded, he needed to reject Sherlock once more."The answer's still no, Mr. Holmes. You're still my student, and I'm not gay."

Sherlock let out a deep chuckle, "I didn't say you were gay. I merely asked you whether you'd like to be my boyfriend. Why do you have to introduce an unnecessary keyword?"

John literally sprinted to his room, not wanting Jeanette to hear anything about the conversation. He was just thankful that Sherlock didn't ask him anything as weird and awkward as wanting to fuck him in the classroom or his office or something. He could swear that there was someone else beside Holmes, probably that girl/friend of his, "I don't think I want to have this conversation."

"Right. Anyway, professor, did you figure out my riddles yet? Or would you like an... intimation?"

John swallowed at the choice of his word. He knew his shallow breathing could be heard over the phone, and he hated himself for that, "I have more important things to do, than to play your little mind games, Mr. Holmes."

Another chuckle. "No, you don't. In fact, you're enjoying this."

"Excuse me?"

"Otherwise you would've cut the phone as soon as your girlfriend had arrived. And before you tell me that she's not," John gulped when he heard that. He was just about to tell him that. "I know for a fact that she is, I've known for ages. You can fool everyone, professor, but you can't fool me. I know that you aren't happy with her, just like you aren't happy with your job."

John couldn't reply. He just held on to the phone like it was the most precious thing in the whole world, like it was his lifeline. He wanted his finger to reach out and press that little 'end call' button, but he found that he couldn't, not with Holmes' deep voice keeping him in place, hypnotising him.

"I've seen how you change around me, John," Sherlock continued, this time his voice much gentler and much more tender than he had ever heard, and suddenly John felt like he was the immature one in there. Holmes understood this more than he had expected, "Stop denying it—"

"I'm marking your paper now, Mr. Holmes," John spoke with difficulty, hating every word that came out of his mouth to silence Sherlock, "unless you want me to fail you."

"Do that. See, I told you. You want this, but you're too repressed."

"John?" came Jeanette's voice from outside his room. John didn't bother to open the door and grace her with a look.

"I expect that essay on synapses on my desk on Thursday, Mr. Holmes," John straightened up and looked at himself in the mirror: he looked like he had just had sex, "Try and study hard."

And before Sherlock could say anything else, he cut the phone and sat down on his bed, thinking about why Holmes always set down truths in front of him like the Ten Commandments. He felt thankful that he wasn't calling him back anymore. He tried his best not to take the phone back in his hand, but he found that he had already somehow saved his number in his phone, not under the name Holmes, but under Sherlock.

A few miles away, Molly took a sample of Sherlock's blood and transferred it into a vial, as Sherlock just sat on the stool, wondering what Dr. Watson was thinking, about who he was thinking.


	8. Chapter 8

"Enough?" Molly asked Sherlock, passing him the vial as he stuck a plaster right where she had drawn his blood from. He peered at the crimson fluid curiously for some time, wondering how this was responsible for giving away the signs of attraction towards for another person. Molly settled down on the couch with the laptop on her thighs, browsing through loads of research material, "Sherlock, are you sure that this will be accepted? I mean, this isn't strictly legal—"

Sherlock gave a hollow chuckle, his heart rate starting to lower as minutes passed after he had made that phone call to Dr. Watson. He had made sure that Molly had her ear plugs on while he talked to him. He really didn't want her to know that Dr. Watson wasn't exactly in high spirits about his job, or the fact that he had a girlfriend. Molly would start lecturing him if she heard the second one.

"I'm experiencing attraction to someone for the first time, Molly," said he, as he started taking down notes into his book, "I might as well take some advantage of it."

She heaved an exasperated sigh, wondering whether Sherlock really had anything for Dr. Watson, or if he was just messing with her. She shook those thoughts away. She had seen the way Sherlock's eyes had lit up when he had been talking to Dr. Watson, and she was pretty sure the man on the other line had been fairly entertaining in his conversation. Sherlock was laughing, and Molly had to give it to the professor, the man who made him laugh instead of a small half-smile and a dry chuckle; the man to whom Sherlock kept attached to even after facing so much rejection because as far as she knew Sherlock, his defences made him shut himself off from the others faster than the clams guarding a pearl. She refrained from asking him anything about what he had said. She wasn't going to pry. Sherlock would surely tell her if she needed to know about it.

It was actually weird that Sherlock could deal with this so easily and so naturally, and yet when it came to the knowledge that Molly considered him his best friend, he had gone into a silent panic attack.

Or maybe, Sherlock was just experimenting. That was more probable. No one's really serious about their first crushes. Even though Sherlock looked quite happier than she had ever seen him, he could've been just doing what he always did: analyse. She wouldn't be much surprised if Sherlock came up to her with a full project upon how attraction developed in human beings and how evolution was a key factor in deciding how the signs differed from one species to other. She found herself giggling silently at that.

"Molly," was the only warning she got about the fact that she was thinking too much and that she really needed to go back to studying, "I'll do the synthesis, you do the paperwork."

That was always the way. Sherlock would do the required research and leave the burden of typing the report upon her shoulders. She saw him put the vial down on the table and stand, preparing the apparatus. There was total silence in the flat except for the clink of glass as she stared blankly at the screen, wondering what exactly he was up to. Then turning back to her work and placing all her trust into Sherlock, who could do impossible things when it came to chemistry, she opened Pages and then, her typing was all that filled the flat in resonance with the clinking glass and the hiss of chemicals that she didn't bother asking where he had got them from.

Sherlock's fingers were focused on the agglutination process as his phone lay beside his notebook, every fibre in his body screaming to him to call Dr. Watson again, and ask him if he was going to reconsider his answer, but he felt that it wouldn't be appropriate. He wanted to get started on the synthesis, and this was the first time he had been starting on any assignment before the deadline had passed. He wanted to not feel the doubt that had been filling inside his head, but he just couldn't stop. He knew right from the first Thursday class that Dr. Watson had a girlfriend who had a horrible fashion sense when it came to men's watches, but he hadn't known that they lived together, and the thought that the nights which he had spent thinking how to ask him out could've been the nights that she and John. . .

He always missed something, and he hated it.

"Sherlock?" he heard Molly's voice from the couch. Mrs. Hudson had been calling and he hadn't been responding, "You alright? Mrs. Hudson's asking for you and about what you've done with the milk."

Sherlock heaved a sigh, not bothering to reply as sat down on the chair, his fingers absently brushing over his right wrist, remembering the only physical contact he had ever had with his professor, as he turned thoughts in his head. He hated the fact that he was inexperienced in this, that he had to turn to Molly. That he was so unsure about something for the very first time in his life, and that he was entertaining so many negative 'what—ifs' to intrude into his mind. Only he knew how many doubts were cramming inside his mind as he went with what the world called "the gut feeling" for the first time. With a clear of his throat, he rose and wrote down the reactions he would be needing for isolation of the chemical compound of the desired nature, hoping that the experiment would distract him from everything.

"Right," he exhaled as Molly followed him with her eyes, "Don't disturb me unless you're having a heart attack."

"Sherlock Holmes!" came a scandalised exclaim from Mrs. Hudson, as Molly tried not to wince at that. He was simply glad that he had the older woman on semi permanent mute. He lit the burner, and set the blood for coagulation, collecting the colourless leftover fluid from it, his mind keeping John and his smile in the back of his head as he began separating the components. . .

* * *

By half-past-eight, Molly decided to let Sherlock work on his own accord. Knowing how Sherlock could go on for hours and not register her absence, she left a note indicating the time she had left under the bunch of notes she had made for him. She was just about to hail a taxi when a black fancy car pulled up in front of her. Sighing to herself as the door was opened for her, she climbed in, finding that Anthea woman beside her.

"You know, Mr. Holmes could just phone me, on this." She displayed her pink phone, every inch covered with 'Hello Kitty' stickers. Anthea glanced distastefully at it, and returned to her seemingly never-ending texting. Molly wanted to peep at the screen, just to annoy her, and then she wondered how hanging with Sherlock was starting to affect her as well.

As always, the car pulled up in front of an abandoned power station, with Mycroft Holmes standing there, twirling his umbrella in his fingers and smiling pleasantly at her, which she only managed to return halfheartedly, "Good evening, Ms. Hooper. I hope your journey was pleasant."

Molly shrugged her shoulder as she sat down on the chair that he directed her to, "It would be if you had an assistant who could make conversation for a change."

As the car drove away, giving them complete privacy, Molly's fingers curled around the pepper spray concealed inside her bag, but Mycroft only tutted at her, "Really Ms. Hooper? You're Sherlock only. . . friend. I wouldn't let any _harm_ come to you."

She chuckled, despite herself, "Sorry."

Mycroft smiled insincerely as their surroundings were draped in silence again. Molly remained completely lifeless as Mycroft finally gave in, "Penny for your thoughts?"

"Have you got one?" She asked, mustering as much courage as she could. Despite knowing him for two years, Mycroft Holmes still scared the shit out of her. Surprisingly, Mycroft's hands roamed around his suit, as if he were actually searching for a penny. But all he found was a gold credit card out of his wallet. He showed that to her, as Molly let herself enjoy the moment a little bit, "Will this be adequate?"

"Keep that. Sherlock's got plenty at his flat."

This time, he let out a laugh, "Yes, of course. But you know why I've called you here, don't you?"

"No," she lied.

"Does the name 'Watson' ring any bell?" he asked, trying to look busy as he drew out a pocketbook, going through the pages one by one. Molly knew that it was no use lying to him.

"Yes. Dr. Watson is our anatomy professor," said she, trying to keep her voice even. Could Mycroft not keep out his brother's life for this time just for once? It was already too complicated, and the last thing he needed was Mycroft coming over and "investigating" into it. Then she remembered that Mycroft was his family, that he had every right to do so, but the way he approached her instead of Sherlock made her forget about that fact a little too often.

"Only a professor? Are you sure?"

Molly wondered if she should tell him. That would be doing the right thing, because she couldn't bear to see Sherlock pining away after an impossible crush. Although she wasn't sure if he would do that, after all, he was Sherlock. . .

"Yeah, why would you think otherwise?"

And instantly, she was subjected to the most intense scrutiny that she had ever experienced, that dared to rival even that of Sherlock's penetrating stare. She tried not to cower, and Mycroft looked away first, making her feel victorious, but she assumed that he did that just to make her feel at ease, "Because in my experience, I've never seen Sherlock take such an interest in another human being. Quite attractive, this Dr. John Watson is, don't you think?"

She scowled at him, "So?"

Mycroft smiled again, giving her a faux—surprised look, "I thought I was going to be asking you questions here, but if you prefer it the other way round, I'll be very. . .  _happy_ to oblige."

"Just," her jaws clenched and her knuckles whitened as she restrained herself from slapping him across the face, "get on with it."

"I'll ask you again. Who is Dr. Watson?"

"I told you, he's our anatomy—"

"I meant who he is to Sherlock. His crush, or simply his new distraction?"

At the last word, Molly stood up, unable to control herself anymore at having suggested such a heartless thing, "Tell me that we're done, because I'm seriously fighting an impulse to punch you in the face."

Mycroft let out a deep rumble of laughter at that, "It's amazing how many people want that, but they never succeed. Not even Sherlock."

She stepped up nearer to him, but Mycroft didn't back away, "I'm more than willing to change that."

"Hmm, I believe you. . . is it that serious?"

She wanted to sneer at him, but she only turned on her heel and started to walk away, "You don't need to send a car. I'll find my own way."

"I won't do anything, Ms. Hooper," Mycroft called after her, "I promise. You should know that more than the most. I worry about him."

"Spare me that, Mr. Holmes," she turned angrily to him, "If you're so concerned, you shan't have to come to me like a spy or something!"

Instantly, Mycroft looked down at his over-polished shoes, his fingers reaching out to pick up imaginary lint from his otherwise pristine suit, "If I had to pry into his life, don't you think that I'd have, as you put it very kindly and completely inappropriately, "kidnapped" Dr. Watson instead of you?"

She swallowed as she saw the lines of his face grave and concerned for the first time. Mycroft looked his age, and yet much older at the same time, and suddenly Molly felt much more vulnerable than she had ever found herself. If Mycroft could look so uncertain, she had no idea what her position was, "Is Sherlock sure about this, Ms. Hooper? That's his teacher."

She took in a sharp intake of breath, her mind thinking up the best possible response to throw in his direction, "I'm telling you for the last time, Mr. Holmes. You're mistaken."

However the look on Mycroft's face told her that he had all that he needed to know. The car arrived behind her. With a last look, she clambered into the car and typed in a text to Sherlock, loyal to him as always.

**_Mycroft knows. He had me kidnapped. Again._ **

* * *

For two days, Sherlock did not attend university. He remained in his sitting room from day till night, his mind completely occupied by his newest experiment, comparing his blood sample with that of an average human being who was not in love, and that of a drug addict. He had made Molly bribe one or two students to "donate" their blood for some good amount of cash he had acquired from one of the debit cards that he had stolen from Mycroft, and which the latter had probably forgotten about. As for the addict, well. . . no one needed to know how he had obtained that. It should suffice to say that he was just glad that Raz still remembered him. Although he knew that serotonin was a neurotransmitter, he wasn't searching for that because it was obvious that it had to be there. He was hoping for something new. Mycroft had paid him one or two visits, asking him why he wasn't attending uni, and thankfully, he hadn't asked anything about anyone, seeing as he already had figured out that Molly had told Sherlock about what had happened. But, all in all, there was one thing which was quite unusual and surprising.

Only two days and he was missing Dr. Watson. Sherlock sighed to himself, wondering how he would spend Christmas holidays if this was what he was going to have to prepare himself for. He longed to pick the phone up and text him, or better yet, call him just to hear his voice. He didn't remember the last time he had wanted to call anyone. He preferred to text. Always.

Meanwhile, in St. Bart's, John had hoped to ignore Holmes and if the latter tried to talk to him in any place other than a classroom full of students, he would strictly tell him that he needed to stop staying after class, or stop calling him, although he had done that only once, only to find Molly with her girlfriends that day, and no tall lanky boy in jeans and shirt and jumper with her. He tried to tell himself that he really needed Holmes to stop whatever he was doing or whatever he was expecting from all this, and he also tried to convince himself that telling Holmes off wasn't simply an excuse to see him. He wanted to tell Holmes that he was wrong about him, that he was perfectly okay with Jeanette and that he didn't need a student ten years younger than him to make inferences about his personal life.

During lunch, his phone buzzed. He groaned upon seeing the name and the initials, and the way at how it sent blood rushing through his ears.

**_How's the boring lunch going? SH_ **

No one was looking at him. John's fingers itched to send a reply, but he didn't, instead laughing at the lame joke one of the professors were telling them.

**_I'll give you two clues as to where I am. SH_ **

John rolled his eyes, and finally managed to send a text back instead of switching the phone off, blaming Harriet for that because he needed hourly updates on her from Clara.

**_Why?_ **

**_You could sneak out of uni and come and join me. SH_ **

He frowned at the audacity of the text. He was a goddamned professor, and he was expecting him to come out of the campus?! He knew that Holmes **was** expecting him to, because otherwise he wouldn't have taken the "pains" to type it at all.

**_That's the first clue, by the way. SH_ **

He looked around him, the only one immersed in his phone except for those group of girls who kept taking selfies and texted each other from one end to the table to another. He leaned back in his chair, angling the phone such that anyone walking behind him would not be able to distinguish anything on the screen because of the lights.

**_That was obvious._ **

**_Not to everyone, John. SH_ **

He gritted his teeth, but if anyone cared to look at him, they would've seen a silly smile on his face. **_I'm your teacher. No first names._**

Instead, John was rewarded with a text consisting of only his name written over and over again. Now, even he knew that he was smiling.

**_I used copy/paste, by the way. SH_ **

John, the otherwise reserved professor, burst out laughing at the screen of his phone, imagining Sherlock saying that to him sheepishly. All the other professors stared weirdly at him, and John realised that one of them had been telling them about his recent divorce. He excused himself out of there awkwardly, and rushed to the nearest lavatory, afraid that if someone saw him, they would know, they would surely know what a wrong thing he was doing. John hated himself for always liking the thrill of doing something that no one was going to like, and Sherlock was simply playing on that. John wondered whether he really was that obvious. And before he knew it, he had dialled Sherlock's number and was holding his breath before the other person picked it up.

"Sherlock Holmes," came the smooth reply from the other side of the phone. John slumped against the wall upon hearing his voice. How come Sherlock had that effect on him? He shouldn't be doing this. He really shouldn't. He should be ashamed of himself that he had even thought of telling Holmes off for calling his mobile, when he was doing the exact same thing.

"Hey," was all John could manage. There was no answer from the other side, "Holmes, you there?"

"Hmm. . . So eager to talk with me."

John cleared his throat and tried to compose himself. This was wrong. This was so wrong, "I've called to ask you to stop texting my number."

There was a beat after which Sherlock replied, "You had to _call_ for that?! I don't believe so, John."

"Stop. . . calling me John," he sucked in a breath and tried to lower his voice further, "It's not appropriate."

He knew Holmes was rolling his eyes at him, "Okay, _professor_ ," and John hated the way he said 'professor'. "You could've simply texted me. Why—did—you—call?"

"You need to stop calling my phone, Mr. Holmes," John tried to sound strict, and surprisingly he did. But it had no effect on Sherlock, as usual.

"The second clue is—"

"Sherlock, please," John sucked in a breath, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his forefinger, "You're ruining my life."

There was a long pause, but this time John did not ask him whether he had hung up or not. Finally, Holmes replied, the usual confidence in his voice gone, "I. . . didn't mean to. . ."

"No!" John blurted out before he could think properly, and then he looked around to see if anyone was there in the staff lavatory. No one. He retreated to a corner, and whispered into his phone, "Okay, give me the first clue."

And the poise was back in his voice. John wondered if Holmes had simply tricked him into feeling guilty, "You've already had your first clue, professor."

"Oh, really? I can tell you're at home, wherever that might be."

"Yup," said Sherlock, popping the 'p', "But I want you to work out the location. But I suppose you can't, given how placid your mind can be. . ."

Now John felt really offended, even though he was quite used to his insults. He didn't get a Ph. D just like that, "Hang on, now—!"

"—so straight forward, barely used. . ."

"Oi!" John instantly turned around to see if anyone had heard him from outside. He peeked out as if he were a refugee. The bell rang outside, signalling the end of lunch. He returned to the corner, his heart hammering insanely, his lips twitching up in a small smile. "What're you doing now?" He asked him breathlessly.

"Completing my project. It's due after two weeks," Sherlock sounded amused, maybe at his own feat. John felt his eyebrows going up on their own accord.

"Really? As far as I remember, you never submitted your assignments, let alone on time, when I let them out."

"This one's. . . different."

"How so?"

"You'll see. Anyway, the next clue—"

John's eyes fell on his watch and grabbed his bag urgently, almost about to say "I'll call you later, Sherlock", and then instead responded with a different goodbye note, "Stop calling or texting me, Mr. Holmes."

The smoothly delivered "will do" told John that Holmes was not going to give up so easily. He looked at himself in the mirror and washed his face, wondering what he had got himself into.


	9. Chapter 9

A few weeks and a Halloween party later that Sherlock went grudgingly to and in which Molly got a little too drunk, Molly and Sherlock were dissecting frogs in the dissection lab with the rest of their incompetent fellow students, as Sherlock put it, and as Molly disagreed wholeheartedly but didn't say that aloud, not really wanting to invite his wrath. Until recently, Molly had been very absorbed in her work, but Sherlock had been stealing glances of Dr. Watson who had been helping a girl at the other side of the lab. Not that Molly ever caught him doing so, but she knew that he had been, because that girl was practically shoving her chest in Dr. Watson's direction and trying to give him disgusting nicknames, and something like that would never miss Sherlock's attention. But Sherlock seemed very absorbed in his dissected frog as he labelled the parts in his lab journal. Molly made up her mind, and raised her hand tentatively, "Professor?"

Sherlock looked at her in undisguised surprise, probably wondering why she hadn't asked him if she had any doubts, as Dr. Watson practically sprinted across to the other side of the room, only to find that the person who had called him was sitting right next to Sherlock. The latter smiled inwardly as he realised why Molly had done whatever she had done.

"Yes, Ms. Hooper?"

But Molly was no less. She was determined to get back at her best friend for a lot of things, namely gate crashing upon her and her boyfriend after their first time, "Sherlock has a doubt for you, sir."

Oh, how she was going to enjoy this, the awkwardness of it! Sherlock was staring at her in such a way that said _I will do painful things to you later_. Molly just gave him a winning smile and retreated to the other side, "I'll be just a moment."

And before Sherlock could say anything to deny such a claim, Molly had walked away to one of her girlfriends. Dr. Watson was resolutely avoiding his gaze; as if he was afraid that if he even looked at Sherlock, other students would know.

"Yes, Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock tried to look away. He had never confronted Dr. Watson at such... short notice. He truly hated Molly, who was two tables away, her attention focussed on her friend and teaching her to dissect the amphibian properly. What had he ever done to her? Sherlock swallowed, wondering why he was avoiding his gaze when he could be so much confident otherwise in front of him. He backed away a little, not really prepared for this, unlike the other times when he would know how to play it. Dr. Watson fixed him with an artfully questioning look, and Sherlock simply swallowed, wanting to make most of this opportunity that Molly had very cruelly given him.

"Erm... I - I, just erm... sir, could you just erm... help me with labelling the... uh, the heart?"

He saw the small flicker of a smile across Dr. Watson's face. He was clearly enjoying seeing Sherlock nervous for the first time instead of the other way round, "You've done it the wrong way, Mr. Holmes. The dissection," he pointed it out, his eyebrows arched, as he fixed him with a interrogatory look.

"Have I now?" Sherlock countered back challengingly, "I don't think so."

But Dr. Watson simply smiled in response, and disposed off the frog into the wastebin, and took a fresh one, giving it to Sherlock, "I'm the professor here, Mr. Holmes." He folded his arms over his chest as he indicated  to the dead amphibian on the table as he took his glasses off, "Do it in front of me."

It sounded like an order, something Sherlock almost scrambled to obey. His gloved fingers wrapped themselves around the scalpel, as he sucked in a breath, using it to make an incision horizontally across its throat. His fingers shook, and he cut in a little too deeply than the epidermal layer, stopping instantly.

"Not like that, _Mr. Holmes_ ," said Dr. Watson smoothly, saying 'Mr. Holmes' the way Sherlock said 'professor'. As if he were also insistent on getting back at Sherlock for troubling him for all these days, "Let me show you."

And before Sherlock could say anything, he felt the professor's gloved fingers brush against his for an instant before Dr. Watson took the scalpel from him and made a neat incision horizontally between the two hind legs. Sherlock was unable to recover himself for a second as his throat felt parched. If only those fingers hadn't been gloved...

"She knows, doesn't she?" Dr. Watson indicated towards Molly, who was having the most frustrating moment of her life trying to explain to her friend the difference between the frog's heart and its liver.

"She found out," Sherlock shrugged his shoulder, like he couldn't help it. Of course he couldn't. He was, as he considered himself, "a rookie" in such matters, and he had to ask an expert some advice on love.

"You'll have to stop texting my phone, Mr. Holmes," said he, as he leaned in. To anyone else, it looked as if Dr. Watson was teaching a particularly dumb student how to slice up a frog, well only if they didn't know that Sherlock wasn't a dumb student at all. No one could make out the whispers passed under the breath. No one could make out the brief intervals when their fingers brushed against each others, slow and deliberate and lingering, and in imminent danger of the scalpel cutting through their fingers instead.

"You could start by not replying, erm..."

At that point, Sherlock saw a side of Dr. Watson he had never known that could exist. He was enjoying that risk, the thrill that the scalpel could cut through him any instant, but he was careful enough to avoid it. Sherlock tried his best not to smile at that, as his heart picked up the pace, when Dr. Watson's fingers overlapped with his as if relishing the feel of Sherlock's longer, dexterous fingers under him, guiding them as he made a tiny vertical incision near the neck, just to give him an idea of how much pressure he should apply. Sherlock knew just how much, but he resolutely kept his fingers under him while his heart tap-danced in his chest, letting them be guided by Dr. Watson's skilled fingers, liking it and finding the newly arousing desires of physical intimacy slightly overwhelming and frightening. He wanted to lean in a little more into his touch, while every part of his brain screamed at the unprecedented lack of buzzing thought, making him want to draw his hand away from the warmth. But how he wanted to turn his palm to make it face upwards, to thread the professor's fingers with his, and do the seemingly insignificant actions of sensuality that couples indulged in. He closed his eyes, feeling the contours of his teacher's fingers, enjoying the immensely understated sensation of 'sparks'. Dr. Watson cleared his throat, and retracted his hand away, seeing that Holmes had become completely lax under him, no pun intended.

"You aren't applying the pressure correctly, Mr. Holmes. You cut in too deep, and now when I'm trying to make you do it, you aren't applying any at all."

Sherlock's eyes snapped open, as he found his scent receding away from him, every part of him screaming in gratefulness and protest in equal measures. He found his throat inconveniently dry again as Dr. Watson busied himself with Sherlock's lab journal, smiling amusedly at the incomplete entries, and the collection of red marks and 'late submissions' in it.

"Perhaps you could... teach me?"

He'd meant for it to come out masculine and half-joking, but his intentions fell flat as his voice emerged a low, husky version of his baritone. He looked at Dr. Watson, who was definitely enjoying seeing Sherlock so nervous as he cleared his throat, unconsciously licking his lips. Sherlock smiled at that. Dr. Watson was equally nervous; his face was completely flushed. He was trying so hard to be such a sincere professor when he clearly wasn't adept at it.

"Hmm, I thought you... knew it all."

"I do. I'm just checking how good _you_ are."

Sherlock was relieved; his confidence was finally coming back, right when he needed it. He looked down at his professor, hands behind his back, scalpel on the table as one corner of John's mouth tipped upwards, attracting Sherlock's attention to it. He took in his odour again: tea and lime cream aftershave. He could lean in just then, in front of everyone, in front of that slutty girl, and press his lips to his, feeling Dr. Watson's nose against his cheek, still with their backs turned to everyone in the class that could tear them apart. Sherlock frowned at that. He had never felt that peculiar temptation.

"Right, do it properly please," said he, before Sherlock could do anything vastly improper, "You have marks for this so don't screw this up."

He flashed him a smirk as his voice pitched in lower, "Then I'll make sure that I _do_ screw it up, professor."

They looked into each other's eyes intensely and challengingly for a few moments not long enough to be deemed inappropriate but that felt like hours in Sherlock's mind clock, neither of them willing to look down or give in to the other. Dr. Watson had had enough. Nobody should always have their way, and Sherlock certainly wasn't going to, not now at least.

A knock at the door caused Dr. Watson to look away towards it sharply, as if he were a prey that had suddenly spotted the hunter, and Sherlock to look triumphant. He took the scalpel between his fingers, the blade deftly cutting through the belly a perfectly vertical slit, continuing from the cut that Dr. Watson had made.

"Yes?"

It was a peon, as he handed the professor a slip of paper. Sherlock folded the skin back to quickly set on the organs, clipping them off with the surgical scissors as Dr. Watson called out, "Ms. Hooper, Mr. Holmes, you are required in the Dean's office."

Behind him a few tables away, Molly made a noise similar to that of a mouse being stepped on. Sherlock simply rolled his eyes, and went back to his dissection, not bothering to even ask what it was all about, assuming that he could get out of it by pretending not to hear him. Molly arrived beside him with shaking fingers and a quaking voice too fast for him to be bothered to comprehend. She literally whisper-shouted, "Sherlock, what have you done now?! And why are they calling me? Is it because I hang out with you? Sherlock, I've told you to stop stealing chemicals from the lab, or taking that skull away to your flat? I told you, I TOLD YOU, DIDN'T I?"

Sherlock gritted his teeth angrily. Why was everything his fault? Good, she deserved this, a little bit of karma for making him confront Dr. Watson without preparing himself mentally!

The class let out an 'ooh' as Molly looked down at her flats, not meeting anyone's gaze, and most certainly not Dr. Watson's, thinking that a bad impression on the teacher would make him mark her down in the midterm exams. But Sherlock didn't budge from his place.

"Sherlock!" she hissed at him, not wanting to go to the Dean's office alone. But Sherlock gave her a small, insincere smile while he sounded like the busiest man on the earth, "You go, Molly and get a look of the interiors of his office, seeing as you've never gone there alone. Maybe, he'll leave the obnoxious Miss Rai for you."

Molly looked at him horror-struck, the beginnings of tears in her eyes at his insensitive reply. He was annoyed for that peon to have come and spoiled the mood. Dr. Watson gave her a reassuring smile, and implored Sherlock with his eyes to go. Sherlock's eyes narrowed, as his annoyance grew further at the fact that Dr. Watson was sticking up for Molly instead of him. With an incoherent grumble, he slid his notebook and his pen into the bookbag and left without a word, accompanying a Molly trying to blink the tears out of her eyes, despite having being used to his cutting comments.

* * *

When they finally walked out of the university, Molly Hooper was the happiest person to walk the earth and Sherlock Holmes was the most... well, bored person in the universe. Well, it was difficult to tell for whom Molly was happier: for herself, or for Sherlock. She decided both, and revelled in the ability to annoy him. Sherlock hated such things, and karma really was on her side. She was getting back at him for all the tricks and practical jokes he had played on her, as for all the experiments he had conducted on her.

Sherlock was in too a bad mood, so Molly decided to let him drive so that she at least didn't have to deal with his sulking while she drove. Somehow, she felt that the responsibility of cheering him up always fell on her shoulders. But she wanted to annoy him as well. But Sherlock's bad mood disappeared a lot quicker as he drove the car in the opposite direction than that of the exit. Before Molly could ask him whether his intention was to drive through the wall, she saw the reason: a short blond young man chasing some rogue papers fluttering to the ground. Sherlock's car stopped next to that of the paper as he peeked out of the window at Dr. Watson's crouching figure. Molly slumped back in her seat, knowing that this was going to take hours. She just hoped that Sherlock didn't request her to take a bus out of there to her flat. She'd kill him if he even dared to ask her that.

But then, she remembered the times she had blown Sherlock off to spend some time with Greg. She was guilty of the same thing.

Sherlock smirked as Dr. Watson came up out of his crouched position, his coat in his left arm, the first two buttons of his cardigan undone, but his tie still in place, and peered through the rolled-down driver’s side window.

"Professor Watson," he greeted him, as Molly rolled her eyes dramatically, "What a surprise to find you here. This is a coincidence. I was finding the exit out of here, and here I am almost crashing into you. Literally."

Dr. Watson leaned down, giving the two of them a smart nod of acknowledgement, "Hello. I think you meant 'we', Mr. Holmes, seeing as you have Ms. Hooper beside you as well. As for exit," Dr. Watson straightened up, and pointed to the opposite direction, "It's _that_ way."

"I know," his smirk grew wider as he leaned his elbow out, looking deep into Dr. Watson's eyes which were no longer obscured by his glasses, "I _observed_."

"Clearly."

Molly slumped back further into her seat, as she looked away from the intense eyesex that they were having, "Here we go... Sherlock, do you want me to, I don't know, take a bus maybe? Because this is really awkward for me."

It was almost laughable, how politely she had said that. Well, grades, she didn't care about them anymore. Dr. Watson didn't seem like the teacher who awarded grades on the basis of impression. He was fairly.... fair.

"No please, Miss Hooper. I was just leaving," he smiled kindly at her, and turned to Sherlock, "So this is how it's going to be from now on?" he asked him brusquely, "You're following me home now?"

"Maybe I'll tell you that the next time we meet in the car park," he threw him a saucy wink, "Anyway, have you changed your mind about my proposition yet?"

Dr. Watson stole a glance at Molly, who had earphones in her ears and country pop flooding through them, listening to the music nonchalantly, "I'm not gay, Mr. Holmes, plus you're my student and you're ten years younger than me."

"Good," said Sherlock, "At least you've stopped saying no—"

"NO, Mr. Holmes. I will not go out with you, and I hope that's clear."

"Oh, come on! Are you doing that thing where you, you know, play hard to get or something?" His fingers reached out and snatched away Molly's phone, and her earphones, "Molly? Molly!"

She threw him a weird look and an apologetic one to Dr. Watson as Sherlock resumed speaking to her, "You do that, don't you? Playing hard to get even when the other boy seems completely uninterested in you, and you mistake him for being interested?"

Molly flushed crimson, looking extremely embarrassed, and John sent him a glare. But before he could say anything, Sherlock leaned his other elbow out of the window, and Molly walked out of the car, muttering something about going to Greg, who worked in that auto shop two streets away. John felt much more vulnerable as his eyes tracked Molly's small figure walk out of the car park. He fixed his attention back on Holmes.

"Did you figure out my riddles yet, John?"

John swallowed and sighed, placing one hand on the edge of Sherlock’s door. Sherlock pronounced his name as if he enjoyed taking it and rolling the sound in his tongue, "I can't be bothered with such trivialities."

"Really?" Sherlock let out a deep chuckle, as he replaced his left elbow with his fingers, sliding his fingers along the door until they touched and then overlapped John’s. He let out an exhale as he spoke, "How about you figure them out now?"

John sucked in a breath, but didn't pull away, his eyes on Sherlock's frustrating, impossible fingers, his breath coming out and entering his lungs in sharp, erratic thrusts. A shiver ran down his spine, as he felt goose bumps cover every inch of his skin, thankfully hidden under the full sleeves of his shirt and his black cardigan as Sherlock stared into his slowly darkening irises, "Let's go by the easier first."

"I've never been attracted to men...." John found himself speaking on his own accord without any thought, "So why should I be attracted to you?"

Sherlock smirked, his fingers travelling over John's deliberately, but the latter kept it there resolutely, believing that pulling his hand away would be conceding defeat, "You tell me."

John looked down at his feet, his hand still trapped under Sherlock's fingers, "Because you're mistaken, Mr. Holmes. That's why. I'm not attracted to you."

Sherlock pulled his hand away then, and raised his window halfway, causing John to snap his fingers backward, "Okay, what about the other one? The cat one?"

Before John could answer, his phone rang out, with the signature text alert of Clara. His expression changed instantly as he fished in his trouser pocket for his phone urgently. Sherlock's expression mirrored that of his, and his face was filled instantly with worry at seeing John's appearance fall from exasperated to anxious and fretful upon seeing the text that had suddenly arrived. He wanted to peek at the screen, see for himself what was causing so much distress to John, but he felt that it will be inappropriate.

"Is it your brother, John? Or your girlfriend?" John found himself looking into Sherlock's concerned eyes, and blinked in surprise, momentarily reprieving himself from the anxiety he felt.

"I don't have a brother," he stated, his eyes narrowing, "perhaps you searched for a wrong 'John Watson' online."

"Come on, now. It's as plain as daylight that you've got a brother or a close male family member, older than you or about your age who's clearly an alcoholic and who's extremely narcissistic to have given away his phone to you, although I suspect that you don't know that."

John staggered backwards, peering at Sherlock with incredulity, and then shook his head, "Never mind where you got that from. I need to go-" He started to walk away when Sherlock's voice stopped him.

"I assume it's urgent. You really shouldn't trust the bus service."

John turned towards him, frowning, wondering how Sherlock knew that he took the bus and suspecting if he was about to offer him what he thought he was about to. Sherlock unlocked the door to the to his adjacent seat, "Come on in. I'll give you a lift."

John still didn't move, despite the urgency, watching the young student he had been so harsh to a few moments ago with surprise. He wondered why Holmes was still so insistent about this, and why he still wanted to help him in spite of everything, all the rejection that John had thrown in his direction. Sherlock pulled up beside him, and opened the door for John, "Standing here isn't going to make you reach there any faster. Don't be an idiot. Get in."

John couldn't remember the last time anyone had been so... kind to him. He had never expected this from Holmes, of all people. Holmes who always threw rude comments in his direction and made his life miserable, and the person he thought about just before drifting off to sleep, who somehow seemed to know everything about him more than John himself did. John still had no idea where he had got that bit about Harriet from. He got in and closed the door beside him.

"Address?"

"Erm... Farringdon street," said he, wearing the seatbelt, "Please, make it fast."

Sherlock gave him a curt nod and set out straight out of the parking lot.


	10. Chapter 10

"So, _professor_ ," Sherlock started, as they made it to the main road, "What made you take a stroll in the parking on such a fine evening?"

John sighed. He thought Holmes became a little serious after starting his car with such urgency. He had even been on his way to send his biggest thanks to God, but no! Holmes was never serious. That was like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs.

"I was just saying goodbye to a friend—!"

"You were stalking me," he stated peremptorily, "You were definitely stalking me."

John looked away, trying to fight the hot blood rising in his cheeks. He didn't even understand why he was feeling lke that. He didn't even know that Holmes had a car, why would he stalk him in the parking? If he had to stalk him, he would go to the. . . no, damn it! He was not going to think about stalking Holmes. He stole a fleeting glance at him, and looked away almost at once.

"Eyes on the road, Mr. Holmes," was all he could manage.

Sherlock stopped smiling as he almost ran into a pet dog straying away from its owner into the road. He resolutely avoided asking Dr. Watson about what the text was about, although he was very sure that it was something more related to his brother than his girlfriend, maybe his alcohol addiction problem, although why John didn't admit that he had a brother was beyond him at the moment.

If only humans had made a device that could measure awkwardness/discomfort on a scale from 0-100, Sherlock would've been very glad to use it for an experiment right now.

Dr. Watson had been very silent since then, looking around at the interiors of the small car. Yes, small. Mycroft had forced Sherlock to earn the amount for himself. All Sherlock needed to do was steal one of his credit cards and go to a dealer and get a car that could accommodate his long legs well enough. By some chance of fate, Mycroft welcomed him with a lemonade and a smug smile plastered on his face when he reached there, and bought the one car that was the cheapest, the worst and the most compact and the most uncomfortable model available, just to teach him a lesson.

Ah, brothers! The things they did to both teacher and student.

Molly had laughed her head off when she had seen his car for the first time, and had taunted Sherlock for a week. He loathed to admit it, but her second-hand car was much better. And then he started to wonder why he was thinking about such a mundane topic as cars.

Of course, he reminded himself the web article on Cosmopolitan that he had read very carefully, as if it were his research thesis. He was going to experience a desire to seek his crush's approval from time-to-time as he found himself wondering what Dr. Watson was thinking about the car.

Dr. Watson looked around, as if acquainting himself with the interiors, as if he would be travelling in it a lot in near future.

"Nice car," said he awkwardly after those cursed two minutes, causing Sherlock to almost bite his tongue in annoyance. The gesture didn't go unnoticed by Dr. Watson, whose legs fitted well enough in the front seat, who looked around guiltily for that having come out of his mouth. Sherlock pressed harder on the accelerator, and then let go again, realising that he was letting his annoyance at his pathetic excuse of a brother get to him again.

The awkwardness reached a new level when Dr. Watson decided to fiddle with the radio. He flicked through the channels, moving from the one where nuclear policy was being discussed to where a heavy riff was playing. Dr. Watson decided that he liked it and set it to that, as Sherlock merely tried not to laugh out loud when he realised what song it was. He had heard that one when Molly had once requested him to go around Greg's auto shop and it had been playing there.

”. . .I’ve got it bad, got it bad, got it bad. I'm hot for teacher!”

Dr. Watson's eyes widened as he realised that Van Halen's 'Hot For The Teacher' was playing. He quickly stole a glance at Sherlock, who was merely smiling to himself as if he were guilty of it, and changed the station again.

". . .Oh teacher I need you like a little child. . ." Sherlock almost burst into laughter at the other song that he identified as Elton John's, "You got something in you to drive a schoolboy wild. . . You give me education in the lovesick blues. . . Help me get straight come out and say. . ."

" 'Get straight', huh?" Sherlock joked, despite the seriousness of the situation they were driving towards, "How appropriate!"

"Do you know that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?" He countered back.

"Touché," said he, while trying his best not to laugh at Dr. Watson's discomfort.

And Dr. Watson changed the station again, his cheeks colouring furiously. Sherlock wondered whether Mycroft knew that he was in his car with Dr. Watson, and if he had paid off the RJs at the radio stations to play only student/teacher songs.

". . .Highway to hell. I'm on a highway to hell!. . ."

Dr. Watson leaned back, a little more at ease. AC/DC always saved the day for him. Sherlock's jaw muscles clenched in frustration. He really liked making him uncomfortable, and the radio wasn't being helpful anymore.

". . . And I'm goin' down. . . Woo, Brian that intensity, phew!" the radio blared on, "Anyway, tell me if you've heard of Rufus Wainwright. Because the next song is a sorta departure from all that intensity. . . little slow and piano-ish, requested by Anna. . ."

Sherlock listened on. Judging by the name of the artist, and 'slow', this one sounded promising. Dr. Watson was looking out of the window at the rest of the suburban London rushing past them.

". . .Yeah, this one song makes me feel shafted since my art teacher was a smock-and-clog wearing woman. Anyway listeners, hold on 'cause this one's a good one!"

And before Dr. Watson could do anything, the slow mundane piano began with. Sherlock would've changed it himself, had they not announced something about 'art teacher'. Maybe Mycroft _had_ done that. Paid off some Anna-something to request for such a song. Or maybe that was Anthea or whatever she bothered to call herself.

". . .There I was in uniform. . . lookin' at the art teacher. . . I was just a girl then. . . Never have I loved since then. . ."

This time, Sherlock couldn't keep it in. He burst out laughing.

". . .He was not that much older than I was. . . He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum. . . He asked us what our favourite work of art was. . . But never could I tell it was him. . ."

Yeah. Mycroft had definitely done _that._

Dr. Watson finally gave up and switched it off, pretending to be busy in the blank papers that he hurriedly fished out of his bag.

"That is very wrong," Sherlock remarked, trying to sound very puzzled while his voice almost vibrated with amusement, "I did tell my teacher that I—"

"Shut up, Mr. Holmes!" he exclaimed, putting a finger up to silence him just as he was in the middle of forming the next word. Sherlock merely smiled and looked away, fixing his attention on the traffic. They swept past his flat, and Sherlock pointed at the door bearing the brass letters '221B', showing it to Dr. Watson, "That's where I live."

John didn't reply. Because if he did, he would surely ask Sherlock why he was telling him this and Sherlock would start off again.

After sometime, Sherlock pulled up in front of the building that Dr. Watson indicated him to. Just as he got out, Sherlock followed him, locking the car behind him.

"Where are you coming?"

Sherlock looked at him as if the answer was obvious, "I'm accompanying you."

John's cheeks reddened slightly more as he looked down at his shoes, embarrassed at letting any student, and of all his students, letting Holmes witness such a chaotic scene in his family, "I didn't invite you."

"I went ahead and invited myself," said he, with a self-satisfied and very ill-timed smirk on his face.

"No, you're not. You don't even know my sister!" John exclaimed, as he entered the building and as Sherlock entered after him. They kept on arguing that Sherlock needed to leave, and that he had invited himself as they walked in on Clara and Jeanette, along with some other people that Sherlock assumed were related to John's brother. They stared at the newcomers weirdly, wondering who the lanky boy accompanying John was.

"Jeanette?" John began incredulously, "What're _you_ doing here?"

But Jeanette's eyes were fixed on Sherlock and his unkempt curls, and she looked like she was wondering why John had brought a young and unnamed boy to an intervention. Clara held a sheet of paper in her hand, and gave one to John, "Read this. I'm so, so sorry John. I know we had planned it for the next week and I know it's such short notice-"

"It's okay, really. . . Where's Harry?" John asked, forgetting Sherlock's or Jeanette's presence in the room.

"Ben is with her. He's the one who found her in a drunk tank two days ago," and then she burst into tears, sobbing into the affectionate shoulder that John instantly provided her, "They're c-coming over here now."

John had never felt any guiltier. Sherlock had occupied so much of his thoughts since the past week that he hadn't had the time to ask Clara about Harry. He glanced up at Jeanette, only to find her mouthing to him as if asking him who the boy was. And then he turned around to see Sherlock inspecting the room carefully, as if cataloguing every detail. John wiped Clara's tears away gently and set her down on the sofa, before turning his attention to him.

"Right, ahem, this is Sherlock Holmes, and I, erm. . ." John tried to find an excuse for Sherlock's presence, "He thought—"

He almost flinched when Sherlock's piercing gaze settled on Jeanette, as if searching in her what made John choose her over him, apart from the fact that she was a female and not his student.

"Oh," Jeanette smiled challengingly, interrupting John, "So, this is your. . . favourite student, isn't he? _Mister_ Holmes."

John wheeled around at her in confusion, at which she rolled her eyes, smiling at his perplexed face, "Oh, come on! The one who you text all the time and the one with whom you stay on the phone for hours, and whose paper you spend a lot time correcting although he never writes much, right? Anyway," she extended her hand to Sherlock, who was smirking at her almost appreciatively, "Pleasure to meet you at last."

"Hi," he fixed her with a stare from top to bottom while shaking her hand. She was an interesting woman, almost with a tendency to cheat on her steady, he deduced by the way she had looked at him for the first two seconds. He knew that there was no point pretending that he didn't know about her, "you must be John's girlfriend."

John tried not to cower at the palpable tension in the room. Jeanette's smile grew wider and colder as she heard him calling his professor 'John', "Yes, _John's_ girlfriend. Jeanette."

They looked like they were having an internal tug-of-war with John in the middle. Clara continued to snivel, and blow her nose. John came between them, almost as a physical barrier, looking angry and extremely embarrassed and covering it up very admirably at the same time, "You were eavesdropping on me?"

She sniggered, "Please! You're always so loud when you say that, _'No, Mr. Holmes! You're my student'_  and all that stuff. I think even our neighbours know about it. To tell you the truth, I thought Holmes was a girl, and you know. . . I thought you called her _'_ _Mister'_  Holmes by mistake."

John felt his cheeks flushing with colour and shame, and subsequently, anger, "Regardless, you couldn't have told me to keep my voice down! No, you had to sneak your way in and listen to whatever conversations I have with my students!" John swallowed before lying to her, "He needs help, okay? He's not exactly a very good student."

Sherlock looked appalled at that, and he found with mouth wide open in horror upon listening to it. However, Clara decided that they were here for something more important, "Quit bickering away like old people!" she squeaked, "We're here for Harry's intervention, not for couples' counselling! I don't care if you've got a student here, John. Please help me out here, and please calm down. We need Harry to get better, don't we?"

John and Sherlock exchanged looks, in which John pleaded him to go away, and Sherlock simply rolled his eyes.

"Why don't you guys take a seat? We can't have people moving once it begins."

Jeanette settled down on the sofa and read through her lines. John wanted to sit away from her. He felt angry that his privacy was being compromised. To his surprise, Sherlock settled down right beside her, being a lot more friendly than he thought he would be with Jeanette of all people. He saw her lean towards him and whisper to him, although he couldn't make out what.

"Interesting, don't you think?" Jeanette whispered in Sherlock's ears as her eyes scanned the text in front of her. Sherlock quirked his eyebrow at her, "What?"

"You know, John has qualms with me being here, whereas he himself escorted you in here. You must be a very. . . interesting student."

"I think me chose me because I've been to many interventions."

"Is that so? I wonder why. . . So," her eyebrows went straight up in the air, "he _told_ you that this was an intervention, and that too his sister's? Definitely an interesting student."

Sherlock smiled sweetly at her, "I wish I could say the same for you, but then I'd be lying."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"Whatever befits the quietude of your dull mind and the tragic circumstances around which your existence revolves." Sherlock hadn't known he could ever be so bitter.

John, sitting at a distance, hoped that they were talking about something. . . this should never have had happened. Sherlock should never have had met Jeanette. But they did look like they were having a very pleasant conversation. John knew what happened whenever Jeanette was involved in a conversation that was even remotely pleasant. Clara stood up and began.

"Okay, Ben's on his way back with Harry right now. Obviously, she has no idea this is coming, so things might get a little. . . intense. But, no matter what happens, remember: this is all about Harry getting better, okay? She's going to deny it, but it's our last resort. . . So, erm. . . Tim," she turned to one of Harry's friends, "You're going to start because Harry hates you the least," she gave a nervous laugh and Sherlock frowned at that, "and then me, and then Jeanette, Alfie and. . . erm, John. . . you'll be last because—"

"Yeah, I know," said he, stealing a glance at Sherlock, wishing for some miracle that could transport Sherlock away from there. Sherlock frowned. Clara was not even acknowledging his presence.

Jeanette regained the smile on her face admirably as Clara finished, everyone waiting for Clara's brother to arrive with Harry, "What are you talking about?"

Sherlock wanted to tell her about her ex-boyfriend, whose name started with 'P' and was a seaman, and who had been a complete and utter dick to her. Or about the fact that she was pregnant and she was trying to hide that fact from John and was undergoing an illegal abortion procedure. But before he could start, a woman arrived in the hallway accompanied by a man, probably that B-person that the sobbing woman was talking about.

"Hey, Clara I—"

Sherlock frowned up at her. She indeed was a woman. Harry was John's sister? He was wrong. John was right. Of course he was right. He was his. . . her brother. She had to be his sister, because she had John's eyes and his kind smile, although it didn't look kind on her; it bordered on haughty. She was an attractive blonde, was a little taller than John, with streaks of purple in her hair, and like him, she also had a habit of unconsciously licking her lower lip. Apart from that, she was an alcoholic, homosexual, promiscuous, worked in software, and obviously way richer than John was. That Clara woman was probably her girlfriend. . . or wife.

Everyone, all the seven people in the sitting room tried to look friendly and turned their attention to Harry as she arrived, looking suspiciously at the gathering. Sherlock frowned at that. This intervention was a failure, he could already tell.

"Hey, everyone," said she, putting her purse down, "Hey Tim, how was Miami?"

Sherlock frowned at the person called Tim. He didn't look like he had been to Miami recently. Why was he missing things all of a sudden? Tim looked around, confused, and then replied slowly, "It was great but. . . it was a year ago, Harry."

Sherlock sagged against the sofa in relief. Harry frowned, "What's going on?" She looked around at the room, her eyes observing every familiar detail: Clara's nervous smile, John's tired eyes, Jeanette's curious face, and a stranger sitting beside her, watching her with a bored expression on his face.

"Who the hell are you?" She pointed at Sherlock. John tried not to flinch at the harshness with which the words were delivered towards him. Everyone turned to John for further information other than the fact that he was a student of John's and that his name was Sherlock Holmes. Before Sherlock could say anything, Clara turned her attention to her, sitting right across the vacant seat reserved for Harry, "Um. . . why don't you take a seat, sweetie? We just want to talk to you for a sec."

She narrowed her eyes and then heaved an all-suffering sigh, "Come on! An intervention? Really? Don't be so lame."

She tried to turn around but Ben didn't allow her to get out, "Harriet, you—"

"I'm not Harriet!" she squealed, "Let me go. I don't want any of this nonsense!"

"Please Harry," Clara didn't leave her place, "We want you to get better, and we're only doing this because we love you."

Sherlock tried not to roll his eyes. That's not a way an intervention should start, because there's no way in hell an alcoholic would buy it. But, to his surprise, Harry sat down on the only vacant place left for her, right between Tim and another woman, and spoke, "Fine, get on with it. And then give me a can of cold beer when you're done."

Clara tried not to sigh at that as she nodded to Tim to start. He hesitated for some time, before looking at his own copy, "Harry, you're not well. You know that, don't you—?"

"Oh, please! I don't even drink!"

"Harry," Clara took the lead when she saw that Tim wasn't working, "Ben found you in a drunk tank, isn't that correct?"

"It was only a few shots!" she protested, "I'm keeping it under control, you know it!"

"Yes, you are, sweetie, but it clearly isn't working. A few shots doesn't end anyone up in a drunk tank. Everybody has been stressed and disturbed by this. We were supposed to go over for a lovely dinner with John and Jeanette, remember? And then. . . you're clearly upsetting all of us."

Sherlock stole a glance at Jeanette. From what he could gather, she didn't seem upset about that at all.

"And that's why we're all here to tell you about a very good place called—"

"OMG!" Harry exclaimed, faking a yawn, "Could you pass me some sleeping pills, Ben? This is like, really boring!"

Sherlock agreed with her completely. This was a complete disaster. Jeanette took over from Harry, reading directly from her sheet, while reaching out to hold her hand, "Harry, we all want you to get better and enjoy life as much as possible. We're all concerned about you."

"Aw gee, let me know if I bleeding notice."

"Harry, drinking is a vice, you know that," she almost looked as if she were a primary schoolteacher, "It causes stroke, cirrhosis—"

"You've got the spelling wrong in your transcript," Sherlock whispered in her ear, unnoticed by everyone as Jeanette continued, trying her best not to grit her teeth in annoyance, "And several other harmful medical—"

"Yeah, go on!" Harry taunted, "Cancer, fibrosis, inflammations, hepatitis, fucking steatosis. . . got all from my little bro there," she indicated at John, who was watching her helplessly. Sherlock had never seen John this broken, and he somehow felt that he had to do something as Harry carried on, "Did you know that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may protect healthy adults from developing coronary heart disease? Didn't you? I fucking did!"

Jeanette looked beaten, and another one of Harry's friends took on. Sherlock tried his best not to sigh at their incompetence. This was clearly not helping Harry. They were averse to humiliating her, or using some sort of strong language, and they were simply repeating things, not really confronting her. They had to put down ultimatums in front of her, something that worked on everyone, no. . . something that worked on everyone except Sherlock himself.

Finally, John's turn came as Harry listened to everyone with a sneer on her face, as if she were fantasising about another pint sometime later, "Harry, you remember when we were kids, you said that you would never hurt me, you promised me that? Well, that's what you're doing to me now. I want you to get better, just glance over at this," he passed her the brochure for the rehab that they had planned for her, "for mum's sake. Just think, she would never have wanted to see you like this, right? And dad too, right?"

At 'dad's' mention, Harry seemed to soften a bit. She looked away for the first time, suppressing the treacherous tears which were forming in her eyes.

"Do you want a repeat of that, Harry, what Dad did to himself?. . . In some years, maybe you guys will adopt kids, and then it's gonna be horrible for you, sis—"

"Don't you dare fucking threaten me with dad and kids, John!" she murmured angrily from under her breath, "You don't control my life. I'm happy the way I am!"

"But you're hurting Clara!" said John, "I mean, look at her. . . See, I know you find it really hard to believe right now but the only reason why I'm doing. . . we're all doing this is because we love you and we're willing to do whatever it takes to set you on the right track, even if we have to humiliate you like this, it's sorely for your own good and it was as hard for me to do this as it was for you. And if I didn't care for you that much, I wouldn't be doing this for you. I promise you this, that if you agree to it, we'll drive you there—"

"Are you fucking done?" she snarled, "Is that it, anyone else want to point their fingers at me?" She suddenly turned to Sherlock, who was the only one who had not spoken anything till then, "You wanna say something? Who the fucking hell are you anyway?"

John instantly shut his mouth. The moment he had been dreading had come along. Sherlock cast an eye at his teacher, and then smiled sweetly at her, "Yes, I do. Firstly, Harriet—"

"My name's Harry, fucking stupid!" Harry snarled. John flinched quite visibly, and Jeanette caught the motion.

"Harriet it is," Sherlock emphasized, and Harry slumped back into the couch angrily, "Firstly, I would like to advise you to not use an extra meaningless word like' fucking' before everything you say. It does not change the meaning at all, and does not create a theatrical effect, if that's what your sole objective is."

John buried his face in his palms. Sherlock was in his 'full insults' mode. This was such a bad idea. This wasn't even his idea. Clara stared at him, completely appalled. Harry scowled, and Sherlock seemed pleased with himself to get some sort of reaction from her, even if it was negative, "What the fuck?"

"Good evening, I'm Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson's student from St. Bart's. I don't know you, you don't know me, so that's a perfectly good start because I'll be unable to judge you for anything other than the fact that you're being an utter, what's that parlance, yes. . . 'dick' to your all-suffering brother. And apart from the countless boring facts that I've accumulated about you since the past forty five minutes.

"I know exactly what you're going to do after this little useless session ends," he continued nonchalantly, "You're going to roll your eyes at everyone, go to your room, crash into bed, wait for everyone to leave and then you're going to storm past your wife, go out for a drink, maybe two, or just a hundred, get completely inebriated and then you're going to crash into a taxi who'll refuse you, and then you're going to hop into next car which happens to come in your direction and who'll offer you a free lift to home. Of course, you won't know that these people are going to sexually assault you, which will be a million times worse for you since you're not attracted to men at all. After they're done with you, they'll leave you in some abandoned house, leave you to die. One pathway."

Everyone looked horrified at Sherlock's speech. This was way worse than what anybody had expected to come out of his mouth. Jeanette simply shook her head, and tried to pull Sherlock down and stop him from talking but he paid no attention to her.

"Second pathway: you're going to return completely drunk, and Clara will scream at you, because she had staged the intervention for you just this evening. She'll leave you, three weeks later she'll send you her attorney's letter claiming that she wants a divorce. You two will split up, and you'll get to drink more. You'll start sleeping with other women, Clara will do the same thing too. Both times, win—win."

Harry was stoically keeping her tears in her eyes, as her voice came out almost broken and tearful, "Win—win?!"

He launched into his rapid-fire once again, "First case: you get to go to the imaginary place that my Mummy and the Bible calls hell. It's described as burning with everlasting flames. How? Must be some combustible material, perhaps fuel? Alcohol is a perfectly good fuel with a very high calorific value. So there's going to be a lot of alcohol once you reach there. Plus, what are the chances that you won't get to share it with your daddy dear in there? Maybe watch some telly with him, order some takeout in there?"

"Mr. Holmes," John began threateningly, this time anger slowly seeping into his voice at his frustrating sister and his impossible student, but Sherlock overrode him, "Second case: You get to keep alcohol, plus you get to sleep with other women. Your wife will get a break out of taking care of pathetic you and get to sleep with others-"

"Get out!" she growled, her voice becoming animalistic, while angry tears leaked out of her eyes, "Fucking get out!"

"Might want to reconsider about inserting the completely meaningless 'fucking'—" Sherlock began, before he was dragged out of the room by John. An angry. . . no, a very, very angry John.

"Why do you have to spoil everything?" he tried his best not to shout at Sherlock, who looked infuriatingly confused as to why John was treating him like that. He had only helped her by confronting her in such a headstrong manner, "John?!"

"Don't you ever dare call me John!" he hissed, "Do you have any idea what you just did to my sister? Now she's only going to go and have some more only to forget your words! You know, I—I thought, I thought you could be serious, for a moment there, I actually thought you could help. . . Never mind, I don't know why I'm telling you any of this, you're just an insensitive prick, that's what you are!" And before he could open his mouth to say something in his defence, John stormed away inside, clearly to console the sobs that were coming from his sister.

Sherlock felt his stomach dropping when he heard that. He had only tried to help, how could John call him insensitive? Did he not care about him? Had he not shown that enough already? He was willing to sit through the boring intervention, he was willing to confront his sister even though he didn't even know her, he was willing to go through his own bad and suppressed and hurtful memories of the interventions that his parents had staged for him, that Mycroft had forced him into, of all his life before uni. He went through that, because that's what you were supposed to do, isn't it? He had read that in one of those articles that you have to sacrifice things for the people you care about. You've got to go through pain for people you care about.

How could John call him insensitive?

_Caring is not an advantage._

He swallowed, and blocked his ears out from the familiar mellow, soothing tenor voice that belonged only to John, and walked out of there. He knew Harry was going to get better, because if that had worked on him, it surely would work on any other lesser mortal. He closed the door of the car behind him, gulped down some water after having spoken so much, and drove out of there, trying to suppress the dull throbbing in his chest.

He remembered the damned thank-you speech that he had to help Molly with. His fingers reached out to text her, asking her to meet him in his flat in twenty minutes.

* * *

Harry had locked herself into her room following Sherlock's offending speech. Clara had continuously banged on the door tearfully, and had barricaded anyone from confronting Harry when she came out, that is, even if she did. She forbade John and Ben from breaking the door open, which would only cause Harry to go into a rage.

They all backed away into the sitting room when they heard Harry opening the door, waiting for the verdict, although they knew what was going to happen. They were all surprised to hear only soft sobs, and no tantrums. John heard the soothing tones which obviously belonged to Clara, and after sometime, she came out, "She's willing."

John's mouth fell open. Harry was willing to go into rehab? After all that shit?! The rest of the intervention had made no effect on her. . .

And suddenly, Clara moved across the room and clasped John's hands, thanking him tearfully. John only caught a name, 'Holmes'. Sherlock. . . she was thanking him for bringing Sherlock along, as only his words had made her want to deflect the otherwise inevitable future, wanting to deflect the break in Clara and her marriage. Only his harsh words had unexpectedly made an effect on her. Of course, they would. Harry never responded to tender words.

"Oh Lord," John groaned, instantly regretting his words to Holmes, and he rushed out of there, into the street as Jeanette watched him incredulously, seeing her boyfriend run away from her to a boy he hadn't even known for three months and the one he already trusted like he had trusted no one. John hated himself, he truly hated himself. He always pushed Holmes away, even when he was trying to help, even when Holmes was the one who made his life bearable. He was gone. His car wasn't there.

"Oh no, Sherlock. . . Taxi!"

He banged his head painfully on the door as he hurried to get into the cab, "Damn it!"

"Where?"

John remembered it. Holmes had shown him where he lived, when they were coming to Clara's house, "Baker street. Make it fast."


	11. Chapter 11

Molly was terrible at writing speeches, Sherlock concluded, but at least telling her off for the littlest of things helped keep his mind off John's words.

"For God's sake, Molly! You don't go by the "textbook format" that the English teacher taught you for your GCSEs. Learn to improvise!"

"Sherlock, you're the one who's not writing properly!" She shook her head at the generous amount of scratching on her notebook, and then at Sherlock's notebook, which was completely blank, "Sherlock! You've got to try at least."

"Molly, I don't want to discuss this anymore. You're giving the goddamned speech! I'm not taking any awards, I—"

"Sherlock, you did the work, it was all your idea! You completely deserve the award. I'm not taking it for myself."

"Molly, it was a joint effort—"

"Exactly. So, either you're going to go up the stage and take it, or we're both going. You can choose any one."

Sherlock did not back down, but he knew that this was Molly's most imperious tone, and that if he didn't obey her, bad things could happen to him. He shrugged his shoulders, "I hate speeches, Molly. This is the hardest and the most daunting task I've ever encountered."

Molly smiled and tore away the paper on which she was previously writing, "I know. That's why I'm making you do it."

Sherlock collapsed into the couch and hugged his legs to his chest and curling into a tight ball, grumbling to himself. It was only once or twice that Molly did a take at him and noticed the sadness on his face when he thought that she couldn't see him. She could think of only one reason, "Sherlock?"

"Hmm?"

"Are things okay between. . . you and Dr. Watson?" said she, remembering the meeting in the car park. She felt like she was stepping a line there. Sherlock would surely tell her if she needed to know about it, won't he?

"Yeah, never been better."

She knew that this was sarcasm. She knew the tone Sherlock's voice took when he was being sarcastic. But the reply also meant that he didn't want to talk about it, so she left it at that. She trusted him to tell her about it whenever he thought that she needed to know about it. She just hoped that it won't be too late when he told her. . . and she honestly didn't know what 'too late' meant.

After sometime, there was a noise downstairs. Sherlock heard the main door being opened, by someone, maybe Mrs. Hudson. He heard steps coming up the stairs, Mrs. Hudson, judging by the footfall.

"Sherlock?! Is your doorbell not working again? There's a man at the door saying that his name is John."

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the name. John? What was John doing here? And why was he introducing himself as John, and not as Dr. Watson as he always kept telling him pompously? Had he come to insult him some more?

Molly's eyes narrowed, wondering what Dr. Watson was doing there.

"I don't want to see him," Sherlock declared self-importantly, curling further into the couch. Molly feared he might almost collapse into himself.

"No, it's okay," came a mellow voice from behind Mrs. Hudson, the tenor that Sherlock had recorded in his Mind Palace as only belonging to his professor, the man who called him an insensitive prick.

John came up behind her, and Sherlock did not know whether happiness shone in his features or guilt. But whatever, John had never seemed so alluring to him, not even in his classroom. His fingers gave an almost uncontrollable twitch as the man appeared in front of him. For one second, one cursed second, Sherlock wanted to push that man away backwards, towards and into his bedroom, close the door behind him and just kiss his thin lips till they became swollen, reddened and delectable, and push his tongue into his mouth, which always remained ajar, for some reason he wished he could deduce.

Sherlock mentally cringed at the idea. Those things were done by lovers, not a student sulking at a teacher. An idiotic teacher who had no idea about how interventions were supposed to go with stubborn alcoholics like Harriet. An idiotic teacher who was always hell bent on making Sherlock leave the lecture room. And yet, an idiotic teacher who had proved himself to be two levels above the average intelligence of most human beings.

No. He was supposed to be angry at John, and sulking as well. And John had come to insult him some more, of course. Maybe his speech had backfired, instead of sending Harriet Watson straight towards rehabilitation. . .

Mrs. Hudson sent a confused look in Molly's direction. She just rolled her eyes at Sherlock, and gestured to her that yes they knew him, and that they were gonna talk. She nodded and left, leaving John standing at the door. Molly attempted a weak smile, "Come in, professor," and she sent a glare in Sherlock's direction.

"Actually. . ." John did a funny thing with his upper lip, licking it and then biting it, as if uncertain, maybe even nervous. Sherlock took a moment to examine him. He had come away in a hurry, banged his head against the roof of a vehicle, probably a taxi because he was short (in which case, roof left him with only one option: the London cab) and because he had to take a cab if he was really in so much hurry. Maybe. . . Harry had run away, and now he needed him to track her down. Well, no thank you. He wasn't going to help him, even if the opportunity could merit him a conversation with John.

". . . I was hoping I could talk with Mr. Holmes in private."

Molly's eyes narrowed, and then they settled on Sherlock, as if inferring something vastly apart from the truth. She nodded and she left, "I'll be with Mrs. Hudson, alright?"

Sherlock hummed in response. Now he felt really vulnerable, and he had no idea why. John was the one who should feel vulnerable, with a student in a small sitting room alone, with a student who fancied him. John stood facing him, studying him, his hands behind him, posture stiff and attentive, while his face was waned with lines of tension and guilt, and yet his shoulders weren't, they were quite relaxed, contrary to the premature wrinkles on his face. He saw the side of John's mouth quirk up, mostly in humour. He wondered why. And then he reasoned that it must be because he had curled up a little too tight against the arm of his couch. He released his legs from their imprisonment by his wiry arms, and stood up, not acknowledging his presence at all.

"So. . ." John started, shifting his weight awkwardly to one foot, and closed his eyes as he looked down at his shoes and realised that he hadn't done his laces properly, "Sherlock, can you hear me?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes impatiently and put his notebook down on the table in front of him with a loud smack, "Of course I can!" he snapped, "I've got ears, and some blessed senses unlike some people like yourself!"

He bit his tongue and looked across at the professor's triumphant face. John had done that merely to extract a response out of him. No one could do that, certainly not any male. Molly could manage that only because she always sounded so pitiful when she tried to attract his attention.

"I know. I am sorry, I shouldn't have shouted at you."

"Go away!" he snarled, his voice full of venom that wasn't his. John flinched at the ferocity of his tone.

"Sher—"

"Molly!" Sherlock called out loudly, shutting John up and making him look sharply across at him with incredulity. This student who always wanted to spend some time alone with him, and now he was shutting him out. She came up almost hurriedly, her footsteps falling urgently on the stairs. Her unassuming figure appeared behind John, peeking at his outstretched figure, as if afraid of what she might see.

"Kindly lead Professor Watson out of here," said he, trying to sound nonchalant while John watched him disbelievingly.

"Sherl—"

"Go away or else I'll have to throw you out of here!" he almost roared at him, immeasurable amounts of anger rising in him, not at John, at himself, at the lack of ability to suppress memories. But it really wasn't his fault. Most of the memories that he had indexed away had a visual trigger, and the intervention was one of them. He had hoped that by helping Harriet Watson, he would be able to find some sort of peace within himself, to finally accept the fact that his druggie days had finally ended up helping someone else by sending them to a rehabilitation facility, but it had done just the opposite. Moreover it had done irreparable damage to whatever he had with John.

When he raised his head, John was gone and replaced by the sight of Molly sitting across him, almost ready to leave.

"Oh. . . erm," she started very intelligently, "I'm leaving now, anyway. I was starting to wonder if you had had a stroke, having hunched over for more than an hour."

And with that, and a bye-bye and a mention of the lasagne that she had taken out of his fridge, she was off too. Thankfully, she had made no mention of the raised voices he had used on his professor. Sherlock moved across to the dining table, choosing to step over the smaller table to take the shortest route to the kitchen. He felt uncharacteristically hungry, as if he had run a hundred miles at a stretch.

He took the half-finished lasagne out of the oven and chewed on it, while he rushed down the Infinite Ladder and down to the deepest levels of his memory palace, towards the room where he had locked the memory of the last intervention that Mycroft had staged for him. . .

* * *

"And so, as this illustration would make it clear to all. . ."

John drawled on mindlessly in his class on Monday, in the class right after lunch. He had seen Holmes on Thursday the last time, in his flat where he had shouted at him, and John had backed away, knowing that privacy was much more required for him than his apology. He had peacefully carted Harry off with the hope of seeing a reformed woman after whatever duration of time she required.

Jeanette had had a very bad argument with him, demanding to know what exactly his relations were with this Mr. Holmes. John had shouted back, confronting her with how she had cheated upon him the last time. She had then concluded that John really was seeing his student and threatened to bring his life down, she had abstained from sex till John answered her properly, and John had been glad and worried in exasperated amounts. Glad because he just couldn't see her that way anymore, and anxious because the sex was the only thing that could distract him from Holmes. At any rate, that was true weeks ago, not anymore. And he wasn't going to try and think about why, because trying to forget was just another excuse to remember.

Holmes was slouched against the chair, outwardly still the same student he had been the last Monday. John wished to know what was happening in his mind. He also desperately wished for Holmes to try some sort of mischief in his class, only so that he could find an excuse to make him stay behind, and try and talk to him and apologize. But Holmes was as silent as an abandoned country graveyard. No one could see that there was something wrong with him, because most assumed that this was one of his sulking days, but John knew better, and beside Holmes, Ms. Hooper knew even better. He liked that girl; she was sweet, and she had muttered a thousand apologies in place of Holmes for whatever unnamed felony he had supposedly committed when she showed him out unwillingly, while pleading with John that this incident should not induce him to award her with lesser grades than she deserved. John simply laughed it off, promising her that he wouldn't do anything like that. He wanted to but he couldn't bring himself to tell her that Holmes was right in his place, like he always was, and that she shouldn't have to apologize when he was the one at fault.

John could not understand certain things about him. Holmes wasn't exactly very excited about helping others, and yet he was always there for John, no matter what. He cared for him, and yet when he came to apologize, Holmes had practically banished him from his residence, acted in a way John had never seen him act. He seemed withdrawn, and in anguish, not just sulking like he did many-a-times. Holmes threw sulks around generously all the time, but this one was different.

The class ended, and John watched helplessly as Holmes steered Ms. Hooper out of there, despite her protests that seemed like she wanted him to sort it all out with him, but he seemed adamant as John heard him declare something about the way her beanie was developing grease stains upon it, and that she really needed to stop going to some auto shop and start studying more seriously. John's lips curled in disappointment as he looked down at the notes for his next lecture. He nodded to himself, and settled down.

* * *

It was raining torrents, characteristic of mid-November as John sat at the deserted bus stop, waiting for one. He really had to cut down on his fancy spending and on dinners with Jeanette, to try and return her to good humour, although he wasn't sure why he should do that. Abbott had already left, and John, not having enough for a cab, just waited there, thanking whatever deity cared to listen to him for his waterproof bag. He decided that from the next time, he would have an umbrella with him, or at least a raincoat of some sorts.

Before he could think further, a car stopped in front of the bus stop, or to be more precise, in front of him. The window rolled down, revealing Holmes who leaned out of the window, his nose wrinkling adorably as raindrops touched his face, and slowly drenched the sleeve of his white spotless shirt. Ms. Hooper's exasperated but secretly pleased face peeked out from somewhere behind him, but John's complete attention was on the boy in the foreground.

"Mind if I join you?" he yelled over the rain as the water ran down his now untamed curls, the hair that had become longer than it used to be. Molly had told him to keep it like that, she had said that it suited him. Sherlock had simply rolled his eyes, because he remembered that her last boyfriend (Tony? Tommy? Toby? something. . . no. Ten-name rule to consider) had a similar hairstyle, and just because Molly liked that sort of hairstyle, he wasn't going to keep it like that, was he? But when he had accidentally spotted himself in his reflection against the mantelpiece mirror, he discovered that it actually suited him as opposed to the short hair that Mrs. Hudson insisted on.

"Not in the slightest," John replied, and before he could say anything else, the car was speeding away, and Holmes shielded his head with his oversized palms and ducked into the bus stop beside John, this time his demeanour not angry or furious at all. He seemed relaxed, and quite content with himself, like he always was. There was no one in the street, save for some vehicles speeding by. Of course, there would be no soul, not in the rain gone wild upon the face of the city, only John and Sherlock, completely isolated, free to talk. For a fleeting and a hopeless second, he had thought that Holmes was going to give him another lift, and he sighed thankfully when he didn't. He'd rather not go back to Jeanette, not when he had to apologize to him first.

John's bus came, and left. He did not care. The next one was fifteen minutes later.

His eyes tracked themselves upon Holmes' lithe figure sitting beside him, at the loose white casual shirt, and his sky blue jeans. He sat at a distance from where he could only feel the heat emanating from his body. He wondered where his bookbag was, maybe he had left it with Ms. Hooper. Jesus, Holmes looked good, really good, as a bloke of course, even in this simple common outfit. Not that John thought of him as otherwise. Just two blokes comparing looks, like friends. . . like teacher and student, like a student who fancied his teacher. . .

No, he stopped himself. He was not going to think ahead. He told himself, he was not gay. And he wasn't attracted to Holmes, not at all. He was just intrigued, and he just wanted him to graduate with the best marks and get on with his life, and do something worthwhile with that massive intellect of his. Just like he had helped Harry sort her life.

The rain was the finest example for the real din caused by the noise of all that they weren't saying. He watched Holmes take a lighter out of his pocket, and a box of cigarettes. His fingers wrapped around one of the cigarettes that he extracted out of it, before he placed the little smoke machine between his lips, and lit it while his eyes stared in the distance, his brows furrowed, his eyes narrowed with the knowledge that John was watching him, fascinated and scandalised by his actions in equal measures.

"I'd say _don't smoke_ , but then I have very good reason to suspect that you won't listen to me," John spoke finally.

"True," said Sherlock, blowing an artful plume of smoke upwards, forming rings on the cold air around them, and taking the cigarette between his fingers, "Want some?"

John considered his words for some time, "You being formal now?"

"Well, being informal doesn't suit your tastes," said he, blowing another plume of smoke after having sucked it out of his long throat, "I'm just sticking with safe ground."

Sherlock caught him staring at the tendons in his neck, which John hastily coughed away, feigning discomfort due to the cigarette smoke, "What's your. . . excuse this time, professor?" said he, throwing him a deadly smirk, "Anatomical interest, perhaps?"

John looked away, trying not to flush with embarrassment and cooking up a silly excuse, "You've just got a little something over there," he indicated to his own neck and then to the imaginary spot on Sherlock's neck, "Anyway—"

"Harriet is your sister?" Sherlock blurted out, causing John's mind to fumble helplessly at the sudden change in subject.

"Er—yes, I thought you saw her that day."

"Harry was supposed to be your brother!" he eyed him suspiciously.

John backed away a little, "No, Harriet is my sister, I've been checking that for the last twenty eight years of my life."

Sherlock gave him a quick, one of his rare half-smiles. John looked away and then remembered something, "Yes, how did you know that I had a sibling at all?"

"Phone," he pointed out, "Give me your phone, and I'll show you."

John frowned, and then drew his phone out and proceeded to unlock it, but Sherlock gave a throaty chuckle, "Don't bother."

He reached out, and John gasped at the warmth of his fingers, which felt like fire against his own cold ones. Sherlock drew the pattern easily, on it, and unlocked the screen at once, though John had no idea how he knew that or how his phone would give away the fact that he had a sister. . . or brother as he claimed. It looked like Sherlock had found what he was looking for and smiled triumphantly, "Explain this."

John put his specs back on and peered at the screen, at the phone log. Along the names, there were lots of 'Sherlock's in there. John tried not to look guilty at that, "About my sister, Mr. Holmes." But Sherlock overrode him smoothly.

"I knew you had saved my number, but I couldn't help wondering about the way you respond whenever you pick up, 'Hello, who's this?' or whenever you answer my texts. . . You've got my number saved under 'Sherlock' in the phone, and yet you elect to call me 'Holmes'. . . Why's that?"

He waited sometime for John to respond, but when he found out that he didn't, he simply carried on.

"As for your sister, I've noticed that you text someone a lot, even on the first day. Now, since you're trying to be a very sincere professor, it's obvious that the texting is not by your choice. That narrows it down to girlfriend or family, but this is the sort of text that you'd rather not ignore, and yet you don't reply a lot. Means some sort of updates. Therefore girlfriend  is definitely ruled out, because anyway, I think she came back to you after your first day. So family takes a much more important scene here. You're not married, and you don't usually text them back, like I said, so you're not a single father. Not mum, of course, because mums of the 80s prefer to talk and hear the voice of their kids. Sentiment. Therefore father or sibling, and since it's important enough for you to not ignore, not members of the extended family. Now, updates on what? Perhaps, a. . . chronic problem, like drinking, or maybe narcotics. Unlikely your sibling will call you on your first day if your father's got a drinking problem, so it's got to be a sibling drinking problem, and that too from someone whose concern is partial towards your sibling than you. Either wife, or husband of your sibling. . ."

Sherlock showed him the scratches around the power connection of the phone, "I happened to see these, and that supported my alcoholic sibling theory. And the sibling's kept it carefully. This is three-year old model by the way, suggesting it's a gift from someone special, pointing to wife or husband again. Husband won't gift a phone, he'd go for a ring, or necklace something similar, because this phone was expensive, he should've been able to afford a diamond ring as well suggesting that this gift is from a woman. To a husband, that was statistically more likely, and considering your 'I'm not gay' parade. But now I observe that this indeed belonged to a woman."

It took John some time to recover himself from the rapid fire, "H—How?"

"The scratch marks. A man's hands, although shaky, would've made far deeper scratches than a woman's. Of course, the phone was at a distance from me back then, so I won't blame myself," he stated self-importantly.

Sherlock dropped the stub of finished cigarette, grinding it under his feet, and then proceeded to take out another one. John stared at that in disbelief.

"That's your second cigarette," he exclaimed.

"Yes."

He looked away, shaking his head. Sherlock was seriously impossible sometimes, "Erm. . . listen, I'm sorry."

Sherlock did not reply. He simply drank the smoke into his lungs, and watched a raindrop make its way from the roof of the bus stop to the cement ground.

"Harry, she accepted rehabilitation. We got her into there on Saturday."

"Good for you."

Now John was getting really annoyed. He was saying sorry to Sherlock like a good boy and he wasn't taking him seriously at all. He reached out, and took the cigarette from between his lips, and threw it away on the road. The rain extinguished it, and Sherlock made a soft impatient noise, and drew out another cigarette, and placed it between his lips. But this time, he didn't light it. When he found John watching his actions with a confused face, he explained patiently with a playful smirk, "Go ahead, take this one out of my _lips_ too!"

John couldn't help but blush like a schoolgirl in response. For God's sake, he was an adult, he thought. He looked away to hide his face from him. Holmes was literally the biggest pervert he had ever met, "I'm trying to apologize, you know. If you don't—"

"Oh, right," he crossed his arms over his chest, taking the cigarette out of his lips and depositing it back into his pocket, "sorry for interrupting."

"Okay, look, I know I shouted at you, and I shouldn't have done that—"

"Pfft!" and he yawned, "Sorry's are boring! Either way, you're going to have to repay the favour back. You could start from now."

John's eyes narrowed as Sherlock rose from his place, "What do you mean?"

"You could do something that I ask you to," said he, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly, "Instead of wasting your breath on an apology which I know I'm going to sleep through anyway. . ."

"I'm not going out with you, if that's what you mean!" John said at once, and Sherlock laughed.

"It's interesting how your mind automatically travelled to that very thing, you know. But no, I'm not going to ask you that. I won't make you do anything which you don't seem to want to, but however much you deny. . ."

"Then?"

"Well," Sherlock looked around at the torrents of rain pouring down on the streets, "You could accompany me home, keep me company, perhaps?"

John thought Sherlock was crazy, which he probably was, "Accompany you home? Through this rain?!"

"Or I could accompany you home, whichever is farther," said he with an impish grin, "And yes, walking. Through this rain."

"You'll get all drenched," he exclaimed, and Sherlock looked at him blankly.

"Yes, I think the concept of walking through the rain involves getting drenched."

"You might get sick," John pointed out.

"I know."

John simply sighed, and stuck his arm out to measure just how hard the raindrops hit his skin. Too hard.

"I don't want to get sick."

Sherlock yawned, "I'll send you flowers and chocolates, come on."

Chocolates. That instigated a completely different memory in John's mind. A very dirty one, and he tried not to associate Holmes with it. And before he could protest, Sherlock had dragged him out of there and into the rain, feeling the little drops attacking his skin brutally, "Mr. Holmes—?!"

But Sherlock paid no attention to it. He simply tilted his head upwards, "I think my residence is farther, come on."

John watched him, the streams of water running elegantly down his pale skin like sweat, only too freely. He did not attempt to go back under the shade. It had been ages since he had been out in the rain, and he liked it, and Holmes clearly knew it, but how, he had no idea. John had always loved the rain, the feeling of raindrops hitting his skin even when he was a kid. He couldn't remember the time when he had begun to ensure that he carried an umbrella along with him during the rainy months.

Sherlock looked down at him, his nose crinkling as he rubbed his eyes, smiling at John as he came closer. John could see every line in Sherlock's face, his pale, keen features with unnerving clarity. He cast an eye down his slim figure, at his shirt. He tried to convince himself his breath had hitched only because of the sense of excitement that the rain caused, at the feeling of something he hadn't done for years, and not because of Sherlock's now almost transparent shirt clinging to his chest and his torso.

"Let's walk," said he, "I've always wanted to get a little sick."

"Why?"

"I get an excuse to stay at home," he replied, "My housekeeper takes care of me, makes sure all my laundry is done, for a change."

John laughed, "So why do you come at all?"

"Attendance," he shrugged. "And a certain professor who says that he isn't gay, but I know for a fact that he is into me."

John turned to look at him again, his heart galloping in his chest, just as Sherlock turned too, smiling that fatal smile. He looked down, at his chest, his gaze flying past his nipples, and then resting on his navel. Being shirtless wouldn't have made any difference. He felt heat rising helplessly in his ears just by thinking about him without a shirt. He looked away, at a tree, where a couple of birds were huddled together, seeking warmth in each other's presence. John had to admit, he did feel rather cold even if his ears were burning, and Sherlock's presence beside him felt rather too warm. His fingers gave an almost unnoticeable twitch, and he looked away from those birds.

"I'm not into you," he replied.

He could've just got another Ph. D in denial.

"How did you even know I was talking about you?" Sherlock asked, smiling enticingly. John decided that he needed to change the topic for conversation, and then noticed that they hadn't even gone ten metres from that bus stop. With that speed, they might never be able to reach their destination.

"How's your preparation for the midterm exam coming on?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "Oh, come on! Finally we get to go on a date, and you ask me about my exam preparations? How lame can you be, _professor_?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Holmes," said John, trying his best not to laugh, trying his best not to feel the clamminess of his palms when it was already wet from the rain, and trying his best not to feel the stirrings in his stomach when he saw how toned Sherlock's chest was, "I'm not on a date with you."

Sherlock fixed him with confused eyes, "Why not? We are spending time together outside our usual lives, we like each other and we're clearly enjoying each other's presence. . . Yes, there might be an absence of a restaurant or a movie theatre, but we don't really need anything to set the mood, do we?"

This time, John couldn't deny the logic in his words, "Nevertheless, we are not on a date—"

"So you admit that you do like me?" Sherlock asked him sharply as if he had been waiting for it, and frankly, John was now beginning to grow tired of his mind games. He changed the subject once again.

"You. . . you've never met my sister. . . so how did you know what she needed?"

This time, Sherlock dropped all his smart-arse smirks, and for the first time, John saw his genuine smile, and a sad one, "Well. . . let's just say I've been to many interventions. . ."

John nodded. So Sherlock did have an underlying helpful nature. He thought that was the bigger picture until Sherlock spoke further.

". . . All of them my own."

He undid the left shirt cuff and drew it back. John let out a small, inaudible gasp, and extended his fingers, running them over his forearm, half out of fascination, half out of surprise. It did not occur to him even once what he was doing. Sherlock watched them thoughtfully, no trace of emotion on his face, not even at the feeling of John's fingers trailing upon them, and that made John's position even more intimidating.

There were innumerable puncture marks on Sherlock's sinewy forearm, dotting and scarring his otherwise unblemished pearlescent skin, a reminder of his junkie days.

"You. . . you were—" John started, not able to form words properly. Of all people, he had never expected Holmes to be a previous drug user, but perhaps it made sense. Holmes could be seeking solace from the ever-present boredom which threatened to consume his brilliant mind. Sherlock, contrary to what he had expected, was completely unabashed about letting John know this little detail about him. A small part of him actually wanted John to know everything that there was about him, but he wondered if that was even possible.

"Yes.  I quit my habits and got myself enrolled in university after I somehow managed to complete secondary school. Molly helped me get clean, she—she helped me through. . . I'm thoroughly indebted to her," he admitted sheepishly.

"She sounds like a good friend."

Sherlock smiled fondly and withdrew his arm, and they simply walked, not in awkward silence anymore, until John broke it, "I'm sorry, Sherlock. I didn't know, that you. . . that you—you know. And I'm indebted to you. I had not even expected that Harry would agree anyway, but. . ."

Sherlock didn't reply. He simply walked, seemingly content at spending some alone time with John away from uni. Another bus went through. John didn't care anymore, even if he was finished with his apology. A vehicle ran past too, and John thought how odd they must be looking, walking through heavy rain silently, with their hands just brushing momentarily as they strolled through the almost deserted street. John allowed himself to glance once or twice at him, and felt his heart swell foolishly inside of him every time. He didn't care if Holmes knew, because he did obviously. He always knew. John felt a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Holmes was right, he always was. He really didn't mind spending time with him. In fact, he liked it. He let himself pretend that he was actually on a romantic date with this one very brilliant _male_ student.

And then the word 'student' came to his mind, making John wonder what could've happened if they had met in an alternate universe.

_If I wasn't your student, and if you weren't my professor, would you have gone out with me?_

But he was still a male. And almost ten years younger. Holmes might not be bound by the considerations of morality, but John was. For his logical mind, things might be as simple as two people liking each other, but not for John. He had somehow managed to bring his life back on track after his junkie days, and John was definitely not going to endanger his life further by becoming an unwelcome distraction for his brilliant mind. After all, what was he? Just a teacher.

They were now somewhere near Oxford Street. John didn't know why, but he had a powerful temptation to break the silence which always managed to fall upon them.

"So, what made you leave the campus so late?"

Sherlock arose from the oblivion. "Mr. Hope. Made us practice out the speeches. Especially mine," he grumbled.

"Ah yes, the upcoming award ceremony, congratulations. Your organic chemistry professor was telling me about yours and Ms. Hooper's work. Said that he hadn't seen anything like it."

"Did he tell you what it is about?" Sherlock asked, trying not to come across as excited but John failed to perceive that anyway.

"He ran away before I could ask him. What is it about?"

Sherlock looked away, brushing the excess water away from his skin, allowing the now retreating rainclouds to shower him with a light drizzle, "You'll find out anyway. And I don't want you to run away thinking I'm some sort of freak."

"You're not a freak," John remonstrated, "Any of us would be very lucky to have a mind like yours."

Sherlock chose not to answer that, instead replying with, "You'll be coming?"

"Yeah, of course. I'm a teacher, I'll have to be there, won't I?"

"Yes, I suppose, but I'm very sorry I can't ask you to be my consort," said he, smiling wryly, "I'm taking Molly, because I really don't want to go up there alone, and I don't think she's going to bring her stupid boyfriend. . ."

John laughed a mirthless laugh, "You won't have to. I'm taking Jeanette," and then he bit his tongue. He shouldn't have said that.

Sherlock's eyes widened momentarily, and then he subsided back with an amused smile, "Jeanette. . . she's smart and clever, and an interesting woman," his tone was actually appreciative, "I can see why you like her."

John frowned. Sherlock. . . what? He always felt this absurd need to explain to him, even if he was the one who was older (although Sherlock did make him feel like he was several years younger). Holmes should mean nothing to him. . . apart from the fact that he was the reason Harry was now getting better (hopefully) in a rehab.

"This should've. . . you should never have met her," John shook his head, "I never intended for you to—"

"Why?" Sherlock's eyes narrowed, one arm going up to brush his hair out of his eyes, "Why did you not want me to meet her?"

Why was that, John wished he could not care about the reason. He somehow felt that everything would go to tempest if they met, just like fire turned water into steam and water quenched fire into nothingness when they clashed together. And how come Holmes, of all people liked _his_ girlfriend, when he clearly had a romantic interest in John, was puzzling. But then, Holmes himself was a puzzle.

"I don't know," he replied sheepishly, choosing the easiest answer when he knew the real thing, the real logic very well, deep inside him, like an intuition which couldn't be worded and which, John knew, Sherlock would find faults in.

"Don't you like her?"

John heaved a heavy breath, "I don't think your question is appropriate at all, Mr. Holmes."

"I don't think staring at my almost bare chest is appropriate as well, professor."

"I wasn't staring," John croaked, watching the curve of his mouth, the way it moved whenever he said something, and then he resolutely looked away.

Smiling roguishly, they walked together, their hands still touching, and all Sherlock could think about was that square inch of feverish skin; his face dropped as he saw Baker Street approaching. John glanced at his watch. It was almost six-thirty.

"By the way, John. . . did you figure out the cat puzzle yet? It's simple enough, but we do need to be reminded it once every time."

Cat purred a lot when no one looked and then someone kicked it and it stopped purring and died. . . how was that supposed to make any sense?

"Is that a very poor attempt at psychology?" John countered back, "Because I'd rather—"

"No, of course not. . . but anyway, come on in," said he, trying to sound inviting, "I did kick you out of my house that day."

John considered it for a moment, and then shook his head, not trusting himself with Holmes in one room, not after how his shirt clung to every inch of his toned torso, "I'd rather not, Jeannette might be home. . . I, erm. . ."

Sherlock smiled understandingly, wondering whether to say goodbye, or. . . do anything that involved not succumbing to the temptation of leaning in and closing the two inches between them, while stroking gently the base of his neck, and guiding him against the wall. . .

"Goodbye, Mr. Holmes. Study hard, and congratulations again."

With that, John turned around, and walked away. If anyone could get a grasp on his mental health, they'd say that he was falling for him.

Sherlock turned too, and walked into 221B, and was greeted by the most unpleasant surprise upstairs: Molly and Mrs. Hudson, looking maddeningly excited as if he had uttered his first words. But as soon as they saw Sherlock completely drenched to his skin, and his chest almost visible, Molly looked away almost instantly and rushed inside to grab a towel from the bathroom, and one of his dressing gowns lying in one corner of the room. Sherlock groaned into his palms, knowing that he won't be able to cut out Mrs. Hudson's banter anymore.

"Sherlock, why didn't you tell me that you were going out with Dr. Watson?!"

"Oh my goodness, such a lovely man, Molly told me all about him—"

"I thought you were going to tell me, but I found out anyway—"

"Here, love, I made you some hot tea, and just this once. I'm not your housekeeper—"

"Sherlock, you've got to tell me! I'm so excited! I want to hear every—"

"Shut up!" Sherlock boomed, not able to take the idiosyncrasy of two ladies at once, "I'm going in for a shower."

And with that, he retreated to the bathroom, shed his clothes, and stood under the shower, going back to how it felt being with John under the rain, his mind brimming with that sense of yearning and the hormonal desires. Sherlock knew that it was quite late for him to experience crushes, if at all it could be dubbed such a laughably mild label as crush. He knew that he just couldn't skive off, not with his elderly housekeeper and his female best friend in the adjacent rooms, but the temptation was almost too much.

He turned the shower off, and dried himself, getting into a fresh-looking pair of pyjamas and t-shirt, and only to find himself face to face with an expectant Mrs. Hudson and Molly in the sitting room. He tried to avoid their eyes as he sipped the still hot tea peacefully, and then groaned when he saw that Mrs. Hudson had taken away his Skull again.

"Mrs. Hudson, isn't it time for your evening soother?" Sherlock snapped when he saw her mouth open.

"Oh, it's alright, dear," she replied so cheerfully that it felt almost infuriating to him, "Now tell me about this lovely young man. What did you talk about?"

Sherlock felt sick to the core. He was not a girl who was going to tell them everything about a. . . whatever John was to him now, "Molly, midterm exams, in case you have forgotten-!"

"But Sherlock—"

"Mrs. Hudson, if I fail, it will be completely your fault. Is that okay by you?!"

She rose, startled, as Sherlock held open the door for her, "I really am going to have a talk with your mother."

"By all means, she understands very little as it is." And he shut the door behind him. This time, Molly did not try and ask him, apart from a tentative 'Sherlock?' which always worked like a charm on him, but today it didn't.

A last resort then, "I'm sad Sherlock, tell me a story."

* * *

"So. . . you're not going out with him?" she confirmed, a little disappointed for her friend and for the obvious lack of stories.

She was very surprised when Sherlock her told about how consistently Dr. Watson had been rejecting him. It was clear even to her that Dr. Watson was indeed attracted to Sherlock as well, but she found it very hard and complicated to explain to Sherlock why he was doing so. He was completely blank when it came to such matters, and disconcertingly so, especially when he looked at her with those infuriating puppy-dog eyes.

"I honestly don't know what I would do Sherlock, if I were in your place. . . I'm not even sure if I'd do that—"

Damn Molly!

And now Sherlock was going to pester her every day, so she tried to change the topic. "You know that award ceremony, how about we get you something nice to wear, you know?"

Instantly Sherlock moved away, grumbling to himself incoherently, and Molly remembered it. "Yeah, maybe we should do that, go shopping or something. . ."

The bad thing about Molly Hooper's friendship was that she treated Sherlock as one of her girl friends and one of her cats, "Are you out of your mind, Molly? I'm not going shopping with you! Shopping is boring!"

"Hey, you promised," she protested, "you once said that you'd do whatever I asked you to do."

She waited for recollection to dawn upon Sherlock's face, and then he strictly denied it, "I don't remember anything of that sort."

"Remember that day, Sherlock, when you broke into my flat just to analyse whether you had a heart problem? I listened to you, in exchange for whatever I wanted you to do!"

Sherlock curled into himself, while Molly rose triumphantly, "Marvellous, we're going for shopping, and not chemicals!" She thought she should mention it, "Actual shopping. And we'll need your brother's credit card. Unlimited balance, isn't that the term which you used?"

Sherlock simply sunk his head into his lap and groaned.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially, I wanted to make John drunk in here, and make him do intensely wild things around London and make the chapter humorous and wild, but remembering that he was a reserved teacher who had insanely high moral principles, and trying to stay true to his character, this is what came out instead.
> 
> Again, I don't live in UK, so if there are any errors in some places, please accept my sincerest apologies :-( I'm just assuming that Mathletes exist in UK. That being said, moving on....

Molly's fashion sense might be mortifying when it came to women's clothes, but Sherlock had to admit, she had rather fine taste when it came to men's clothing.

Especially suits.

Molly had dragged him over to somewhere in Knightsbridge, and Sherlock realised that she hadn't been joking about the unlimited balance on Mycroft's credit card. It had been the most tedious thing that he had done in his entire life: suit and tie shopping with Molly Hooper, and once or twice, he had thought of playing truant on her and abandoning her in one of those stupidly posh shopping centres. And then he had remembered that they had come by Molly's car, and he didn't have much cash on himself (Molly had taken care of that), and so he let himself be dragged around by her.

Truth be told, he found out that he had an eye for colour, and his taste in women's clothing was much, much better than Molly's. Therefore, to Molly's disappointment, and to Sherlock's utmost delight, the shopping spree had gotten over in a mere three hours. Although, he hadn't expected that it would take as long as three hours. Over and over again, to Sherlock's extreme annoyance, he had been prodded, poked and measured, and most of them criticised his skinny and pointy body as though he wasn't there. One of those salesgirls had been completely besotted by him (somehow, being a jerk was a turn on for some women), and Molly had been laughing all the time as she called that particular salesgirl to measure him up, just to annoy him. But Molly seemed to know what she was talking about, so he just let her get on with it, not wanting to understand about the various designer labels she kept chattering about.

If anything, he was thankful to Mycroft's credit card. He had no idea how his mother was going to bombard him with a lecture on responsibility when the card statement reached his big brother.

"Dr. Watson's going to go so mad after seeing you in these," she exclaimed, and Sherlock managed a little 'hmm', not really interested to go in front of his teacher in anything other than what he was comfortable in, a simple shirt, and jeans and jumper, and certainly not in a suit that was a little too tight at his shoulders. He didn't know how John did it, but he managed to see right through him.

But he had to admit, he did look good in them. Okay was a more appropriate word, while he tried not to roll his eyes at Molly and the tailor's stunned faces. One of them got as far as to call him exceedingly humble, at which Sherlock could do nothing but scoff. Molly could attest to how modest he really was.

And 'looker' was the word she had used. Sherlock begged to differ, and only thought about how John would look in a suit. Smooth and smart.

The award ceremony was two days from now, and the midterm exams just two weeks after that. Molly was on the verge of completing her syllabus, so she found that she could spend some of her free time playing Cluedo with Sherlock, and most of it with Greg, of course, but Sherlock did not need to know about that, did he? Anyway, their Organic Chemistry project attracted a lot of attention, and it was being accorded as some longish title that Sherlock instantly deleted the moment the name had fallen upon his ears. All he had done was extracting the compound, and upon analysing he had found that it's structure closely resembled that of sedatives which could be used during labour instead of the more harmful ones which had more permanent side-effects. For Sherlock, it seemed nowhere as brilliant as how his professors claimed it to be. He wasn't even planning on going, but there was one incentive. John would be going too, although with Jeanette, but that was alright. An idiot could see that John was no longer attached to her.

Sherlock eyed the suit cautiously as it lay mindlessly on the armchair, like an opponent smiling up at him maniacally, and for the umpteenth time, he changed his mind.

"I'm not going," he declared to a Molly whose complete attention was on the explanation that Sherlock had given to her on a question she had been stuck on. She chose not to pay any attention, knowing that a single word would make Sherlock huff and curl back into his armchair.

"Professor Watson."

Okay, two words.

Sherlock huffed and buried himself into his mobile phone, "This is ridiculous."

"Shut up, Sherlock!" she snapped, now thoroughly annoyed, "Or I'll start on the solar system again!"

"What's the point of this anyway, Molly?" he whined, "I'm getting my grades, aren't I? Why do I need to get a prize for it?!"

Molly took off her reading specs and looked at him incredulously. Any other person would have killed for such a prestigious award, "Because you don't like it, Sherlock. We have to do things that we don't like doing, you told me that. Now please let me study, or I'll have to go back to my flat."

"Go away," he grumbled, "you're useless."

She looked a little hurt, but she came IP with a comeback,"I'll abandon you on the stage... How awesome, the great Sherlock Holmes has stage fright!"

"I do not have stage fright!" Sherlock snapped back, "And stop making me sound like I'm some hero returning to my homeland after having conquered the seven seas!"

Molly simply smiled, taking a deep breath at Sherlock's more relaxed face, "Better?"

Sherlock smiled back, "Loads better."

She kept smiling to herself, as she buried herself in the papers from the last year, "Although, it comes to me as a surprise," said she, restraining her laughter behind clenched teeth, "that you do know that there are seven seas..."

"Molly!" came Sherlock's voice, telling her that it was quite enough.

"Sorry, I'll shut up now."

* * *

The dreaded day came finally. Sherlock had his speech in his breastpocket, and Molly was saying hello to everybody like the kind lovely soul she was as she took Sherlock's arm and he let her talk her way around. There were many other students from many other universities. St. Bart's wasn't recognisable anymore, it was sort of lit up with what Sherlock dubbed as "fairy lights" and Molly giggled at that. There were waiters and waitresses holding trays of champagne and seafood dotted around, and posh cars pulling up outside the grounds. There was classical music playing somewhere in the distance, and Molly simply whined about robbing the world of the sight of Sherlock Holmes in a fine tux and playing his lovely violin with those mournful tunes only she and Mrs. Hudson had had the good fortune to hear. Sherlock simply huffed in exasperation because Molly had an eternal love affair with his violin and not his "cuteness" as she very inappropriately named it.

And apart from that, Sherlock realised that Molly was slowly coming to terms with the idea of Sherlock and Dr. Watson. He knew her fears and her anxieties, he knew that she feared that he might go back to drugs if it didn't work out, and he knew that John was a teacher and he knew that she only thought the best for him, but sometimes, her attitude did make him feel like she was "Mycroft—ing" over him, although Molly tried her best not to do so, but nonetheless she did, and it was driving Sherlock on edge.

It struck him how well she knew him, much better than anyone in the whole world did, even Mycroft who was clearly of a superior intellect. He knew that Molly, having an alcoholic uncle, had protective instincts and a babysitting nature, and sometimes Sherlock wondered whether she stayed with him only because she needed to be felt needed, because there was frankly nothing in him that made him a proper contender of "best friend", but she did say that he was her best friend, and that she would never trade him for anything else.

But it was the times when Molly teased him with Dr. Watson which made it all up. She wouldn't stop, she would go on and on, and then Sherlock would be forced to drown her wailings in those of his violin.

Sherlock just couldn't stop. If studying his forensic science books and telling Molly off was all that he did, then Dr. Watson was all he could think of, and his dreams were beginning to be of a slightly more stimulating nature. It was beginning to become troublesome, since _he_ had to change the sheets and also wash them now, and not dump them on Mrs. Hudson. Worse, it was beginning to distract him in his class. Soon, Sherlock found himself being gratefully relieved from the sensation of being bored in Dr. Watson's class. But worse, he found that he couldn't concentrate on anything except the man himself, and his silly little, not to mention inexorable, habits. He replayed them a thousand times in his mind, and then he replayed them a few times more, so much that, to his utter dismay, he himself was becoming a victim to those habits. Molly looked at him weirdly whenever he would reach out for his coffee mug in a different way than he usually did, or whenever he would lick his lips, something that he never usually did. But eventually she figured it out, and Sherlock sometimes wished he had a friend who was of a lesser intellect than she was.

Presently, he found himself staring at a slim dark-haired boy whose skin was just as pallid has his. People were swarming around him, wishing him congratulations. Sherlock had never seen this boy around St. Bart's, perhaps he was from another university. The award was national after all, St. Bart's was just playing the host for this year. He simply revelled in his ability to look around at people and laugh inwardly at the multitude of problems they faced in their lives.

Molly and Sherlock squeezed into the congratulations circle, and that boy looked at him for the first time. Sherlock felt like cringing at the intensity of his gaze, almost as if it swept through his skin as his gaze travelled up and down him. There was something weird about him, and when Sherlock called something weird, it translated to normal English as outstandingly weird. He felt outlandish and silly for thinking such things that made him sound like a conspiracy theorist, but he couldn't help it from nagging at the back of his head. He frowned and looked away, instantly judging the boy as someone he would not be comfortable talking to. Sherlock glanced at the exit for a welcome distraction from the boy's singularly intense gaze, and felt his heart swell foolishly inside of him.

John was in a simple but striking black suit, a flattering cut against his body and obviously his best, he could see that much easily. Unlike Sherlock, who was holding his arms rather awkwardly, John seemed to have just the right look for it, and he looked like he was very comfortable. Right next to him, Jeanette look extremely dull, and Sherlock wished he could have been the one who was standing beside John, feeling his presence near him, and then slowly turn to kiss him, slowly and then with building fever and passion, go down, and down torturously till John couldn't take it anymore and he thrust into his mouth as he moaned Sherlock's name from his lust-reddened lips, until he saw stars...

How he wanted to do to John what he had been regularly doing to him in his dreams.

"Sherlock," Molly whispered, "That's the one," she pointed at the boy who had been previously staring at him with a decided lack of tact, "the one who beat Carl Powers, the Mathlete, and the one who's getting the award for excellence in the mathematical field here! Oh, I can already imagine Mr. Smith's red face!"

Carl Powers was a Mathlete, a prodigy in mathematics, as Sherlock was in organic chemistry, and this new boy had come out all of a sudden and beat Powers. Understandably, many of St. Bart's professors, and especially Mr. Smith who was their calculus professor, were avoiding him. Sherlock suddenly found himself a little interested in the boy, "Oh really?"

"Let's find out his name," she squeaked excitedly, "Come on Sherlock, let's talk to him!"

"What—?" but before he could protest any further, he found himself being led towards him. Almost as if it had been planned, the boy's eyes met his, and Sherlock looked away instantly, deciding that he didn't like him at all. Thankfully, Molly volunteered to introduce herself, and Sherlock could see that she was pretty keen to do so. The corners of his mouth danced in a peculiar, self-satisfied smirk upon seeing Sherlock's discomfort before he leant in for a conversation with Molly.

Feeling utterly useless, Sherlock excused himself out of there. Although he had his back to him, he could tell that the weird boy was looking in his direction. If he had really beat Carl Powers, the boy who had the reputation of beating the hell out of the three IMO Olympiads he had sat through in secondary school, for that award, then he must be very intelligent, very much so. For his own part, Sherlock remained the second-highest scorer in mathematics where Powers was the first. It already bothered him that there was one person better than him, but now it bothered him even more that there were two people better than he was.

Well, only in Mathematics, and that was the only relief. When it came to Chemistry and biology, Sherlock was the undefeated, unquestionable topper.

But as Sherlock walked away from him, and towards the one person for whom he had come that night, that boy ceased to be the centre of his thoughts. John turned around and looked at him, and Sherlock was pleased to see the effect he had on him. Although he wondered if he did look as good as he did in a simple shirt and a pair of trousers.

"Hey," he managed hoarsely. Jeanette turned too, and for one moment, she was thrown off as well, and that seemed to please Sherlock more. But as John's mouth fell unconsciously open at the sight of Sherlock in a striking black suit and a black tie, what pleased him more became debatable.

But nothing was worth the dismay on Jeanette's face when John ignored her completely and focussed all his attention on Sherlock.

"Mr. Holmes," he extended his hand cordially, and Sherlock gripped it, their handshake lingering just a little more for Jeanette to notice but not the rest of the world, "The big day, huh?"

"Oh please!" Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I came here only because... well, you know..." he glanced at Jeanette and laughed inwardly when he saw John go slightly pink in the face. Jeanette sighed exasperatedly, helping herself to some champagne that Sherlock thought she would never get to taste in her life otherwise, "Join me?"

To his dismay, John leaned towards Jeanette and kissed her softly on her left cheek, "I'll be back, darling."

Jeanette looked at him with a victorious smirk on her face and no affection for John's lips trailing over her skin, as if telling him that her boyfriend was still hers and that he would never be his. Sherlock felt a flash of fury at that. She did not deserve the time she got to spend with him. The least she could do was acknowledge his kiss, but she was more interested in keeping John to herself than someone he would genuinely be happy with.

"Take care of _my_ boyfriend, Mr. Holmes," her words were almost like a mock, as if suggesting that John would never be his. Nevertheless, Sherlock bit his lip and led John away from her, resisting the temptation to say, "Better than you, actually." John looked a little embarrassed upon being at the centre of a tug-of-war without even his permission.

"She's charming," Sherlock spoke sarcastically, as he handed John a glass of champagne.

"Sorry for that," he said sheepishly, "I really don't know why she acts so weird around you."

"Right," he managed a laugh, "You don't." John shot him a look that bordered on I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about, and Sherlock simply sipped from his glass peacefully.

"Speech ready?" John asked, this time mischief glinting in his eyes endearingly. Sherlock reached out for it, "Here it is," said he, "I made some edits before I got out of the house when Molly hadn't been paying attention."

"So, you're just going to insult everyone for the award just like you do in my class?"

"Much worse, professor," he winked, and John simply rolled his eyes, "Well, I better let you get to it. Ms. Hooper's calling you already."

Sherlock turned around to see Molly with a glass of champagne, and he realised that he really needed to go. Molly had a most amazing talent for getting smashed just anywhere, and he really wasn't keen on getting on-stage with a drunk Molly, "Yeah probably, and I'll leave you to your... boring girlfriend."

"Go away," said John, with a slight smirk, making Sherlock's stomach turn in dizzying circles, and then he found himself frowning slightly at the description, however accurate it was.

"Molly!" he warned her, taking away the booze and frowning down at her like he was her dad. To his immense relief, she wasn't drunk, and to his utter displeasure, that strange boy was standing with her, watching Sherlock carefully. Being a master of piercing gazes himself, Sherlock really wasn't fond of being at the centre of one.

But when his voice came out, Sherlock found his mind grappling to keep up. He had expected it to be anything but soft, lilting Irish, anything else but that.

"You must be Sherlock Holmes!" said he, sounding and being too dumb for such an intelligent student, "Molly's told me all about you."

So, this strange boy and Molly were on first-names basis now. Sherlock tried not to come across as wary, and tried to best ignore his menacing presence, "Molly, now—"

"I'm Jim," he piped in excitedly, extending his hand, "I read about your project. Very interesting!"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed momentarily, "Thank... you," and then, after a minute of hesitation, he added, "Yours too."

"You think?" Jim asked him brightly, and he began appearing less intimidating to Sherlock. Maybe he had just been imagining it, "Yeah, I really think we should go Molly."

And with that, he took her hand in his and almost dragged her over.

* * *

After ten minutes, Sherlock was beginning to become mind-numbingly and almost comically bored.

Molly was fidgeting in her seat uncomfortably, and the emcee tried to come across as unabashed at Sherlock's yawning, who had been sitting in the front seats. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Jim glancing at him every now and then, and that sense of foreboding did not entirely go away. It was disturbing, and although Sherlock tried his best to not come across like that, he couldn't shake that feeling away...

"... Sherlock come on!" Molly squealed as low as possible, "They've announced ours!"

Turned out, he really wasn't paying any attention to it. His and Molly's name had been announced, and their award described and the clapping had already begun. Sherlock rose awkwardly as Molly and he sauntered up to the emcee, who was looking down up at him with a calculating expression. Sherlock bestowed him with a half-smile, shook hands with him and gave a devilish smile for the photograph that he intended to send to Mycroft to help him with some nightmares. Molly thanked everyone, and Sherlock was beginning to think that she was going to thank even her cat, but to his relief she didn't, and to his dismay, she passed the mic over to him, just like she had promised.

"Er—I... ladies, gentlemen..."

Almost, as if he had been drawn to him, his eyes met Jim's again, who was settling back confidently in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. Sherlock licked his lips nervously, not understanding what was there in him that felt like a buzz in his mind, an annoying distraction. From that distance, his eyes were dark and dangerous and menacing, and only to stop himself from faltering, Sherlock swallowed and managed a vague 'Thank you' before strolling off the stage with Molly on his arm. She tried not to appear surprised at why Sherlock hadn't gone with the extremely offending speech he had written, or why he had faltered. As far as she knew, Sherlock did not have stage fear and she had never seen him hyperventilate. Somewhere at the back, John tried not to frown at the way Sherlock's demeanour had suddenly changed when he had looked at the audience. He tried to suppress the bitter twinge in his chest when Sherlock did not meet his eye, instead choosing to take another sip of the excellent wine in front of him. Jeanette gave a short laugh beside him, and John felt anger rising in him at her for laughing at the expense of his student.

"You okay?" Molly whispered as they settled into their seats. Sherlock tossed her the award, "Keep it. I'll have the photograph."

She frowned in confusion, "Why?"

"My smile in there, if you could call it that, is going to give Mycroft horrendous nightmares."

Molly sighed in relief. There was nothing wrong with Sherlock after all. Maybe he had decided to cut all the people some slack. Beside her, Sherlock simply sunk into his own world, trying to block out Jim.

* * *

After the awards there was some more socialising. Sherlock simply slinked off to a corner, leaving Molly to talk with students from other universities.

"Enjoying?"

He turned around to find himself face-to-face with Jeanette, "Hello. I thought John would be with you."

She leaned against the table near him, sipping from her glass, "John's off with his friends. Meanwhile, I thought if I could talk with you."

"Hmm... no," he said, sounding bored.

"Mr. Holmes," said she, smirking at him and then looked away, both of them staring at the blond professor, "You pretend as if there's nothing to talk about. You're trying to drive a wedge between John and me."

He chuckled, "Yeah, like you need _me_ for that."

She turned around sharply, her eyes narrowing, "What's that supposed to mean?!"

"Please! I'm not doing anything. I'm just a student—"

"Who fancies my boyfriend," she exclaimed haughtily, "John is not gay. He'll never be with _you_."

Sherlock's eyes glinted, as if he had been looking for that, "So, you're not worried about your crumbling relationship with him, you're worried about me being with him... What sort of a girlfriend does that, I wonder?" he spoke, as if solving an equation, "perhaps the sort whose ex-lover, who was a seaman, left her for another woman, and who had to turn to John because by being with him, she could stay rent free in a flat than a hotel room because her family had already disowned her, perhaps?"

Not one of them noticed John who had spotted them together and who was striding over to them urgently, as if to prevent whatever damage each of them were about to do to each other.

"Perhaps the sort who had a tendency to cheat on her boyfriend, or maybe she already is... going by the state of your knees? Or the sort who's trying to hide the fact that she had undergone a secret pregnancy termination operation from her so-called boyfriend—?"

Before Sherlock could realise it, Jeanette raised her hand, and brought it down in a slap across his cheeks. John froze a few metres away, as if he had himself felt it across his face. Thankfully, they were quite a distance away from people, so nobody heard that.

"You're despicable!" she croaked, her fists trembling and her knuckles whitening, her face twisting into abject hatred towards Sherlock. Her nostrils were flaring slightly, her breathing had become heavy, and yet steady, almost precise to be used as a metronome. Sherlock winced as he brought one long-fingered hand to his left cheek, feeling her blow. And then he turned to see John standing there, looking at Sherlock from Jeanette in stupefaction.

Jeanette turned around, and stormed off, "John, come on. We must go."

But John did not move. He stayed there frozen, as Sherlock breathed in, wincing from the blow, as he looked down at the ground, sucking in a sharp breath.

"No." His voice was calm, steady, slow.

She whipped around, looking at his face with serious incredulity, "What the hell, John? Come right now!"

Sherlock's eyes rose, from hers and to John, "Mr. Holmes, could you give us a moment of privacy here?"

"No!" Jeanette did nothing but scream, well almost, like fighting a lost battle, "What the hell has gotten into you, John—?"

"Please stop screaming. You're making a scene," he ordered, sounding much like a teacher, and Sherlock felt that it would be best if he went right away.

"I'm screaming?! I'm the one making a  _scene_?" She approached them, "Fine! Say what you have to say! If you've got guts, say it in front of this _freak_!"

John swallowed, and for the first time, Sherlock felt genuinely afraid of him, for being so insanely calm and contained, even though anger practically vibrated in his voice. He saw the pulsing in John's jaw, as he worked his words out, calm and yet fierce, "You have no right to hit a student of mine, Jeanette."

"Student?!" she scoffed, "Even a blind man can—whatever, I hope you're happy with this freak! I hope you two grow old together and die!"

To Sherlock's surprise, John left his side, and grabbed Jeanette's arm a little too firmly, walking away from him. He had seriously not considered Jeanette to resort to a slap to shut him up, and her blow had come across as a shock to him. He closed his eyes, remembering John's face, and then turned away to walk towards his best friend, his mind preoccupied with John.

So much occupied that he did not notice Jim slinking under the shadows, who had probably witnessed all that had happened.

* * *

"How dare you hit Sherlock?!" John hissed at her once he had gotten her out into the grounds, "He is my student, and he's not a freak!"

Jeanette assumed a defensive pose, "Stop kidding yourself, John! I'm surprised you haven't been kicked out of St. Bart's after the way you follow him around like a puppy! He's—he's a boy. I'd have been fine if it was a girl—"

John scoffed at that, "Excuse me, excuse me, who asked for _your_ permission? As far as I see, you don't have any right over me!"

She laughed, regarding his idea as preposterous, "I'm your girlfriend, John, don't be ridiculous!"

John sucked in a harsh breath. "Not anymore. We're done."

Jeanette looked at him as if she had been gut-punched, gob smacked, "John, seriously—"

"Leave," he commanded, looking down at her black stilettos, feeling like a rebel, "We're done."

"Oh, so you choose _him_?" She cried out like she couldn't believe him, "Over me?"

"I'm not choosing anyone," his voice was still deadly calm, although, all of this felt like an act of rebellion, as if he was indeed choosing Sherlock over Jeanette, but as he kept telling himself, he was not breaking up with her just to be with him. He did not even want to be with anyone. He was... just done, "I'm breaking up with you."

"Fine!" at this point her voice was high, high enough to come across as deranged, "Don't come back crying to me when it's over," and that was John's breaking point. Everyone could handle until a certain point, and John was no exception.

"You know, you were the one who came back to me after Paul ditched you!" he retaliated back, "You were the one who patched things up just because _you_ needed a place to stay!"

And suddenly out of nowhere, John understood just what Sherlock meant by that weirdo cat story he told him every time.

"And don't pretend to be innocent," he continued. Sherlock was right as always, so right, "If you think I'm so stupid, then you're mistaken, and I'm endeavouring to correct it! Sometimes you do have to kick a cat in its sodding arse to stop it from purring like an irritating banshee!"

This time, Jeanette looked confused, a welcome expression from the previous maniacal one she had on her face, "What?!"

Suddenly, John felt light, lighter than he had in days. It was like he had been a canary in a cage, and that now he had found a crack in it and he had somehow managed to squeeze out of it, or as if Sherlock had winked at him and opened the door of his cage, setting him free. He actually might have flashed her a grin and sauntered off, his hands in his pockets, "Before you figure that out, I suggest you find a new residence for yourself."

"John?!" This time, her voice became much more confused, and almost bordering on painful, but this time, John was having none of it. No more words were needed.

"I'm done with you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a math person, with passable knowledge in Chemistry and zero of biology, so if any of the things that I mention here sound like an oddity, please don't sue me.
> 
> Yes, I know, I made Carl Powers into a Mathlete instead of an athlete, bite me.
> 
> Screw you, word limit! I've had enough of that in high school from my English teachers and I'm NOT adhering to you when I write fanfiction!


	13. Chapter 13

Sherlock could not stay longer at the award function, because Molly was beginning to get too drunk, and he had to cart her off to her flat, where he knew that her parents were going to be mad at her for drinking a little too much. Well, she deserved it.

As for John, he had seen him last with Professor Abbott and Professor Stamford, but he had been too busy managing Molly. By his face, he could make out that he had finally told his girlfriend to stuff it and naturally he assumed that John was now single and that maybe now he would have no qualms about being with him.

Boy, was he wrong.

Sherlock stayed up all night, wondering how he should take things now. John's heterosexuality was a still a huge problem, and Sherlock knew that he somehow had to win his heart. So he did the only thing he trusted: Internet.

The internet said that a date was the best way to get the person you like to open up to you, or by buying them small affectionate presents. While Sherlock wondered if such a tactic would work on him, he decided to experiment with John, now that his girlfriend was gone and John was "available".

Unable to contain himself, Sherlock started as early as 6:30 the next day, naturally having forgotten about the present and only to remember it when he was two streets away from John's house. What was a person supposed to gift another person? Something that John liked, obviously, but what? There was nothing on the street, except for one homeless fella, who was eating cherries, or who had just popped the first cherry into his mouth.

Sherlock sighed. Cherries it is. He drove to the man, and leaned out of the window.

"Are you feeling particularly hungry?"

The man shrugged, "No."

"Then you can sell the cherries to me. How much for that box?"

The man stared at him weirdly, wondering why Sherlock insisted on robbing a homeless fella of his only cherries, no pun intended, "Seven and a half."

The corners of Sherlock's mouth quirked in displeasure. It was too less. He wanted his gift to John to be very precious and special. Nevertheless, he did not give up, "Imagine," he picked up one of the cherries, "these are the last ones on the planet. There's not going to be any more after these. What's the price now?"

The man's eyes narrowed, "Fifty."

Sherlock rolled his eyes at the man's stupidity. If he were in his place, he probably would have said thousand at once, "Imagine that the Queen watered the cherry plant out of her very hands. What's the price now?"

The man gulped, wondering what sort of idiot he had run into right in the wee hours of the morning, "Hundred."

"Imagine that Adam did not eat an apple. He ate a cherry from a tree which made these ones too," Sherlock snapped impatiently, "What's the price now?"

This time, the man took the fall, "Five hundred."

Sherlock shook his head, and actually thrust five hundred into the bewildered man's hands and took the box from his hands, "Very poor in business, I must say. Have a nice day!"

And with that, Sherlock drove away, leaving the man to stare at the notes in astonishment.

* * *

John twisted and turned in his sleep, wanting the strange, surreal dream to end. Usually he dreamt about his life before college, and mostly he dreamt about his dad when he was still alcohol-free and who made pie on Christmas, but never anything as weird as this. He felt like he was being sucked into a whirlpool head-first, threatening to tear him apart. He wanted to scream, he wanted to struggle, but none came out. That big, dark hole kept sucking him into a whirlpool, with John powerless to resist...

John woke up with a start, immensely relieved that the dream had ended. But his heart immediately gave a lurch when he found out that the slimy sucking sensation did not go. Immediately, his eyes travelled upwards to see Sherlock's slate-coloured eyes staring back into his curiously, as if John were a lab specimen. Almost instinctively, John backed away, covering his sheet over his chest. Sherlock simply smiled happily.

"Good morning," he whispered, his face crinkling into a tender smile.

"Holmes, what the—? What the hell are _you_ doing here?!" He wondered if he was still dreaming, but Sherlock looked pretty real. And irresistible too... and then John mentally shook his head.

Sherlock looked confused, "Waking someone up with a kiss is supposed to be very romantic," he stated, and John simply stared at him in bewilderment, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

"Why the hell would you even do that?!" He asked, now anger rising through him, "And how the hell did you enter _my_ flat?!"

"Your fire exit was open!" Sherlock protested, "Even a blind robber, which is highly unlikely, can get in. And stop saying hell!"

John simply shook his head went to the mirror, dreading what he might see there. He gasped in horror. There was a big and throbbing hickey just above his left eye.

"Sherlock!" He felt like screaming his head off at this very insolent student, who did not respect the limits of an appropriate student-teacher relationship. But what came out of his mouth was not what any one of them had expected, "That's not what you call a waking kiss! It should be gentle. Gentle!"

"When I kissed you gently you didn't react, so I had to apply more force." Sherlock seemed offended that his endeavours weren't properly appreciated.

" _Sucking_ on someone's skull can hardly be considered kissing!" he retorted. Sherlock was so hopeless and so annoying.

Ignoring John's questions like volleys of arrows fired at him instead of acknowledging the kiss, he spoke excitedly, making warmth spread through John's chest despite himself, "I got you a present."

Blushing slightly, he handled John a box wrapped in newspaper. Forgetting all his anger, John looked at the package curiously, his heart pounding foolishly in his chest at the thought of a present from Sherlock, "What's this?"

"Of course, you have to open it, John," he rolled his eyes dramatically, "Need I teach you this obvious—"

"Okay, okay," John shook his head, unable to take Sherlock's banter anymore, and unravelled the packet to find a box of cherries staring back at him. John's eyes narrowed in confusion as Sherlock took one of the cherries and popped them into his mouth. John wondered if he had ever let it drop, even as a joke that he was fond of cherries. He did not. In fact, it was just the opposite.

"What's this?"

"These are called cherries, John," he retorted matter-of-factly, "I couldn't find anything to gift you, so I bought it for five hundred from the homeless guy who sits near Starbucks," he admitted shyly, and John couldn't help the warmth blooming in his chest for the millionth time.

Cherries for five hundred? Lord...

"So..." John bit the inside of his cheek, trying to contain his laughter and his annoyance, "You got me a present.... cherries."

"Yup," said he, popping the 'p' neatly, "They're nice."

"Why did you get me a gift.... Is this another of your projects?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, making himself comfy on John's bed without his permission. Sometimes, John forgot that Sherlock was his student, and then he would remember that he forgot that he was a student, at which point he would be very confused. Sherlock simply watched John, his hair dishevelled from sleep, and his voice sleep-roughened. He wanted to laugh out loud, because whatever he had with him, John was still his professor, and the idea of seeing him so mussed up instead of his pristine tie hanging from the starched collar buttoned right up to the throat was comical at the least.

"No, John. Couples are supposed to gift things to each other..." he stated in a scholarly tone, "I thought you knew that—"

"We're not a couple!" John insisted, "And you're not supposed to be here," he hissed, as if the neighbours could hear him, "Holmes, you're a student."

"Yes, I know," Sherlock grumbled, "I'm a student, male, ten years younger than you and I am all lines and angles instead of curves and mammary glands! But you broke up with your girlfriend for me. Which obviously implies that you'd like to be with me—"

John shook his head, "Yes, I might have broken up with my girlfriend and she might have moved out, which should be none of your concern, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go out with _you_ , Mr. Holmes. How many times do I have to—?"

"Oh please!" Sherlock scoffed, "You defended _me_ , against your girlfriend-in-a-manner-of-speaking."

"I did not break up with Jeanette to be with you! And I can't take these cherries."

Sherlock frowned, "Why not? They are very delicious. And I got you a gift, you can't refuse a gift!"

"Yeah but," John gave a yawn very unbecoming of his otherwise very self-conscious mouth, "I'm - er - look I appreciate this, but I—"

"You what?"

"I'm allergic to cherries," he admitted.

But Sherlock simply broke into laughter, "Great, so the only gift I get you to find out that you're allergic to them."

"Mr. Holmes—"

Sherlock continued, ignoring John, "Anyway, Angelo's, near Northumberland Avenue, 8 pm. Quite near your flat so it should be convenient for you. I'll wait for you there." Until you come remained unspoken.

"Mr. Holmes—" John began unsuccessfully, only to be cut off by Holmes once again, knowing what John was going to say, "Okay, I have to go. It's a Thursday, and I have to pick Molly up. Good bye!"

And with that Sherlock strode out of there, and into his car, whistling to himself merrily.

* * *

Needless to say, Sherlock arrived at Angelo's to find the booth empty. John didn't arrive. Sherlock bought himself science magazines to pass the time. One could almost say that if Sherlock was going to top the exams even this semester, it was going to be all thanks to Dr. Watson.

He smiled to himself at John's phenomenal stupidity, and it was only Sherlock who could take up so much rejection, but he knew it was okay because he could _read_ it in John's eyes, the desire, the need, the want for his companionship. It wasn't rejection, it was denial, and if anything, Sherlock was always up for a challenge.

Then he reminded himself never to use that terminology with Molly, otherwise one day he would end up being beaten up by her. Which she did once. Her slaps could be terribly painful, since she always wore stupid rings on her fingers.

If anyone had told Sherlock before he had met John that he would be waiting for a man to show up for a date everyday for two weeks, he had no idea what he would have done to them. But Sherlock did, he just sat in a corner and ordered what John always ordered when he had lunch in the university cafeteria, and the coffee he ordered there. Books and internet were the best way to pass the time and every day, he got up at nine o'clock as Angelo gave him the 'no-show' face sadly. Sherlock knew that his brother could see him, and he knew that Mycroft thought that he was a fool for waiting on a man who might never arrive. On Day 13, Mycroft had actually dropped by and tried to make Sherlock understand that this man was not worth his time and that Dr. Watson was as straight as one could be. Mycroft was frankly amazed at Sherlock's performance, that Sherlock had _hope_ in his heart that John would surely come one day, like it was inevitable. Mycroft proceeded to tell him that Dr. Watson probably had no idea that Sherlock was sitting and waiting for him, at which Sherlock had only managed to challenge him in a game of deductions, knowing that Mycroft would surely be derailed from his agenda at that.

On Day 19, the miracle came true. John did arrive. Sherlock almost stood out of his seat in astonishment, as if he couldn't believe that he was there, even if he had come hoping that John would arrive. John had actually dressed up properly, as if for a date. His shoes were new, and his shirt was bought two days ago and his jacket still had the price tag on it. John had actually dressed up for him, and he looked, as Molly called it, so 'rad'. Sherlock swallowed as his eyes fixed themselves onto those of John's surprised ones. Why was John looking so surprised? He did tell him that he would be there... maybe it was because he hadn't expected Sherlock to arrive so soon. Fine, he was a slacker in uni but he would never be late for a date with him....

John hadn't dressed up for him, he realised as he spotted a blonde woman behind him, whom he was leading into the restaurant. Sherlock tried to swallow the instant rejection, and put on a smile.

"Holmes?!" John let out a surprised and a very undignified yelp, perhaps wondering why Sherlock, of all people, had to meet all his girlfriends, "What are you doing here?!"

Sherlock's stomach sunk deep into a pit upon hearing those mere words. A weight seemed to drag him down, and the fragile hope that John was going to come curled away, like paper that had caught fire.

"I was—er—"

He wondered whether he should tell John that he was waiting for him, instead of expecting him to bring with himself a date. John would really think that he was some kind of a freak, and Sherlock did not want to be known as that, not when John's ex-girlfriend had called him by that very name. He did not want to come across as a stalker, but.... "I—"

For some reason, the wrinkles of annoyance on John's face died down, as if he remembered why exactly Sherlock was there too. His eyes were indecipherable and uncharacteristically soft as he shook his head, "Sherlock, you—It's been two weeks!"

"Nineteen days," Sherlock corrected him, and John swallowed, looking over to his date whom he had seated at a table farthest away from Sherlock, "John, we should be together—"

He stopped before he could speak any further. John's eyes seemed saddened, and even at a distance he could see the rapidly jumping pulse point in his neck, almost as if he was agreeing with Sherlock.

"I've been ordering the salami sandwich you like—" Sherlock let it slip, his guarded tongue and his defences dissolved by the incomprehensible frankness in John's eyes, "I order my coffee without sugar—"

"Mr. Holmes!" John put up a hand, and Sherlock could see in sharp clarity the brown lines on his palms against the fair skin littered with pen marks. Sherlock wanted nothing more than to extend his too, and thread them together and go back to that rainy walk they had together. John's hands were shaking, as he spoke, "Go back to your place, and study. I'll be the happiest person on the earth to see you top this time as well," and with that, John walked away, leaving Sherlock bemused about what it was now that was pulling him away.

It struck him how earnest John's tone was. He didn't say that out of any sort of favouritism for him, and that struck home. John didn't say that as a teacher to a student. There was something else. The air between them had become warm, and hot and then with a weird twisting sensation which he was sure that John had processed.

"And by the way," John looked back, shooting illegal fireworks exploding through Sherlock's body, only to be doused by the hopeless feeling, "I like Italian Salad with bitter gourds," this time, he had an impish grin on his face, "You could order that too."

Sherlock wondered how he had a female friend when it was females who took away his every opportunity with the man he fancied.

Angelo walked across to him, looking worriedly at him, "Is that your date, senor?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "One Italian Salad with bitter gourd, please. Along with my usual."

* * *

The next day, Sherlock gave up on his crusade of ever being able to convince John. The doubts that he had brushed away on that day when they had shared a walk under the force of the rain returned to him in full measure. He saw desire in John, but what if it was not what Sherlock had thought? As far as he had seen him, John's life was as mundane as it could get. The routine life of a professor, his vision hidden behind glasses, the tie like the hangman's noose around his neck, alcoholic sister, tiresome and demanding girlfriends... was Sherlock only an outlet for his frustration in his life, for not being able to do that something that he wanted to? Was he miscalculating, was he _wrong_ about John, or did he hate him for leading to his breakup with his ex?

Because outside uni, Sherlock wasn't John's student, so why was he not amenable to the idea of them being together? Was it only because of the stupid word called "student", or was it the ten-year generation gap, because Sherlock had a hunch that being male isn't John's first problem right now.

John did not trust him. He always pointed out the problems of them being together. Sherlock trusted him with everything, trusted him to know that John would come to him eventually. He wished John trusted him too. But he didn't. No one ever did. Sometimes not even Molly.

He only was thankful (was he?) to own the fact that he never let any of the doubts swim to the surface, to the front of the confident mask that he wore in front of everyone.

His phone rang out beside him. He wanted to go to Angelo's booth to sit there and wait for John again, even if he felt doubtful, even if he felt mind-numbingly bored while sitting in the restaurant alone, going through coursework that he had gone through many times before. He hated his mind for being so perfectly able to conjure up an explanation that pointed to the fact that John did not want to be with him. Of course, he had always hated the most precious possession that he had at his disposal. His mind was his greatest enemy, combined with his treacherous heart, it always made him doubt himself by raising side-doubts, and things he shouldn't be bothered with, but he has to, because all of them eventually led to John.

He had gone over his entire syllabus three and even four times while spending his time there and he had thought over twenty three new ideas for his experiments, but he did not want to be the first man in history to be stood up for the twentieth time. John was cruel if not anything, if he decided to let Sherlock sit there for eighteen days, and then bring his own date on the nineteenth. Seeing that his brother was calling, he was tempted to press "ignore call", but as he had never done that, he picked it up eventually. Mycroft wasn't the one to call him just because he had a whim, was he? That was more like Sherlock's speciality.

"Yes, what?"

"Aren't you ready for your _date_ , Sherlock?" came the snide, deriding reply, and Sherlock felt like he had never been proven so spectacularly wrong.

"Go shave your back, Mycroft!" He snapped back, and he heard the mocking laughter, instead that it did not sound mocking. At all.

"Shame, that," came Mycroft's cool voice, "Because I think I can see a man of Dr. Watson's height and his stature sitting cross-legged at the booth right now. What time it is? Oh yes, almost half past eight. In fact, he has been there since a whole half-an hour."

Sherlock's eyes widened at that. Oh, he wanted to believe, he wanted to believe so, so bad that John was there sitting, waiting for him. For _him._ In _his_ booth, and not with some random girl who wore too much makeup as if she were going to an Indian wedding. He wanted to believe that John was sitting there waiting for him. And if he was, he wanted to sit at home, and let John see how it felt like to be stood up, never minding the pleasant temptation to run away to Angelo's.

Or it could just be Mycroft pulling his leg.

Except Mycroft did not seem to joke. Ever.

Nevertheless, he snapped, "I can't believe that you have sunk to such low measures to make a joke out of me, Mycroft—"

"Don't be absurd, brother dear. I was in the middle of a very important meeting when my PA came to inform me about it."

Sherlock's mind swam pleasantly at the explanation, "What?!"

Mycroft understood that he had let slip a very undesirable fact that he had kept the professor under his vigil, "Anyway, Sherlock. Christmas is coming, and Mummy needs you here after your exams are over. You can bring Ms. Hooper with you, seeing as Mummy and she are on the very best of terms."

Sherlock knew exactly why Mycroft was always insistent upon calling Ms. Hooper to their house. Whenever she came up, Mummy Holmes and Molly always tended to team up and make Sherlock's life a living hell, allowing the big brother some excuse from his mother's scolding, seeing as Mummy Holmes still liked scolding his twenty-six year old son about his diet and his official nonsense.

"Aw, hell! No way—!"

"Eight thirty three, brother dear. Don't want to make him late, do you? And at any rate, a small 'thank you' wouldn't go amiss," Mycroft's voice sounded singularly expectant, but his voice felt short as the call ended with a beep.

* * *

John was pouring over his copy of _Gray's Anatomy_ , waiting for Sherlock to arrive. He had said eight o'clock, hadn't he? He wondered why he was late today of all days, when he had managed to come and agree to it.

He didn't know what it was about the familiar restaurant that made his stomach lurch. Meeting Sherlock in a public place and that it had no relation with university seemed daunting to him, and rebellious. And John hated for it for sounding so inviting.

He couldn't make head or tail of it. It felt like he was giving out a vibe or waves or whatever it is that he was giving out. It felt like although everyone was buried in their food and their incessant chatter, their attention was still somehow fixed on John because of those vibes, as if they could feel it on the skin, so strong that it sent them involuntarily nose-first in his direction.

He looked at his watch. Eight forty five. What if Sherlock had decided to give up? That would be a desirable development, no mentioning however disappointing. He knew that he looked weird, sitting there all by himself, waiting for a person who, in all probability may not show up. Even though he was familiar with the restaurant, and the manager, Angelo, since it was only a few blocks away from his flat, it felt, everything felt distinctly different. The lights looked brighter, harsher, more imposing, telling him to stay and go at the same time. The woodwork under his fingers seemed smoother and unfamiliar and a lot like the way Sherlock's warm fingers felt under his, and he had no idea how that parallelism seemed so appropriate to him even though it shouldn't be, but it did nonetheless and John couldn't argue with cutting, jagged-edged logic, could he?

He remembered the last night, the disappointing date with Cassandra, but did not bother recalling it just before his "study date" with Holmes. She had been pretty amazing till Sherlock had turned up, and after that, John lost every little ounce of interest that he had in her. His mind, his body and his heart burned, _yearned_ to go to Sherlock and do—what? He had no idea himself. He didn't know what he expected to get out of a meeting (meeting, not date) with Sherlock Holmes except for an assortment of awkwardly juxtaposed sentences and remarks and Sherlock's blatant flirting that somehow managed to make him feel like he would be so much better off after running a few laps of the whole city and shouting out to the world that he WAS not gay at all.

But, as Sherlock had made the idea creep into his mind and make a permanent residence there, liking Sherlock (and he did NOT like Sherlock, thank you very much) did not equate to being gay. If he were truly homosexual, he would've been attracted to other men also but he wasn't. And he knew about bisexuality, and he knew that he wasn't one. Because he didn't feel like he was attracted to women and men. It was like he was attracted to women and, oh God he did not say this, Sherlock.

He would've given anything in the world just for the intense feverish pulse calm down in him.

He had wanted to take the cherries that Sherlock had given him and pop them all into his mouth, and he knew about the way his body would go off jittery in both directions after he did that. But the idea that Sherlock had given him cherries, and something as insanely hilarious that he had bought them from a homeless fella for five hundred pounds had made something else move in his chest again, and it had made him take them and then worry about the consequences later. It was not like anything hadn't moved in his chest before when he had first saved Sherlock and Ms. Hooper from a bunch of bullies, or when Sherlock had asked him out, or mostly when Sherlock had allowed him into a fact about himself that he had probably not told many people, about his drug-saddled past. But it had been the moment when John had set his eyes on him, waiting patiently in a corner of Angelo's was when he had felt that his heart had either dropped to his stomach, waiting to be churned by the digestive juices, or maybe it had climbed up his narrow oesophagus lined with thorns.

Or maybe, it had jumped out of his chest, or cut through his shoulder blade, ejected itself out of him. At that moment, anything could've been possible.

It was hard to verbalise what he had wanted or felt when he had seen Sherlock there, and when he had consequently realised _why_ he was there, and it had been hard to concentrate on anything after that. It had just been Sherlock's presence hovering in the back of his mind, leaving a deep imprint behind the eyelids of his mind's eye, cursed to see Sherlock whether his eyes were open or closed or both.

Presently, his eyes drifted to the lithe figure of Holmes hurrying down the cab. It seemed like if he stopped running, the world would curl into itself and collapse upon him, or the hellhounds that were on his track would tear him apart if he dared to even catch a breath. John almost stood up in relief, but then forced himself to sit down, and take a moment to calm himself. He smiled lazily at Sherlock's surprised face.

John was dressed nothing like a date, with his retro nerdy glasses and his cardigan pulled over his button-down shirt complete with his tie. He looked like just the way Sherlock was used to him, just the way he was fond of, even if a proper suit made him look sexier. Like a professor.

"John..." he drifted off, evidently at a loss of words from his smart-arse mouth. John was waiting for him, and smiling up at him. His date from last night had perhaps not gone well, but that was the least of Sherlock's concerns.

"Come on then, Mr. Holmes," John replied smoothly, showing him the copy of _Gray's Anatomy_ and eliciting a groan of dismay from him, "We haven't got all evening."

Sherlock's shoulders dropped, and he huffed into the seat next to him, "Seriously?! After I convince you to go on a date with me, you try to be my _bloody_ teacher?"

"I am you teacher," John retorted, rolling his eyes, "Now, I'll appreciate if you don't call my _class_ , not date, boring, you know."

Sherlock smiled wryly, taking off his jacket, "Yeah sure, go ahead. All thanks to you, I'm going to top this semester as well."

"So confident?" said John, flipping through the pages, "I didn't realise I was such a good teacher."

"I wasn't complimenting."

"I know."

Sherlock shifted very slightly in his seat and eyed John mischievously, "You know, the restaurant is a very noisy place. What about we go to your place and study?"

At this point, under the table, Sherlock's leg had suddenly come in contact with John's, and he was brushing it gently against his. John swallowed for a highly uncomfortable moment, and before he could cough it away, Angelo appeared with an impish glint in his eyes, "Sherlock, Dr. Watson! What should I get you? Maybe that Italian Salad with the bitter gourd that you ordered yesterday?"

John turned to Sherlock in astonishment, "You _actually_ ordered that?!"

"Turned out that your taste perception is radically different from that of an average human."

"Oh, so you _do_ consider yourself to be an average human?!" John eyed him slyly, and Sherlock, in reply, caressed John's calf with his foot provocatively. John's throat had become very suspiciously dry and his mouth too damp to be able to speak without drooling.

"John will have the salad, and the usual for me," Sherlock remarked, while John tried to recover from Sherlock's brutal ways to get his cock interested.

"I'm not eating that crap," John protested, "A simple tomato pasta with do!"

"I'll get a candle for the table," Angelo quipped, "it's more romantic." And then, before John could protest anymore that this was not a date and that it was a "study date", Angelo hurtled away. John heaved an exaggerated sigh. After all, who had heard of a study date in an Italian restaurant?

"So," he looked at Sherlock's smug face, "happy? Now let's get to revision—"

Sherlock simply groaned, not knowing whether to hate John for conducting revision during what was supposed to be a date, or whether to love him for having come at last.

* * *

Their "date" was nothing like Sherlock had imagined it to be. Pretty soon, he found John quizzing him with questions that he was starting to find difficult to answer, and he was getting used to John's smug face because he knew and Sherlock didn't. But every time, Sherlock managed to drift him away towards conversation, John was surprisingly unyielding. But at any rate, nothing was worth those treasured and truly awkward moments of sexual tension between the two. Any crappy doubts which Sherlock had in his mind before that had gone away, just gone away like they had vanished in mid-air, and Sherlock found himself laughing more than he ever allowed himself to.

"So," Sherlock spoke, as John put his coat on, ready to leave, "Will we be doing this again?"

John shot him a challenging look, "I don't think we'll need this, Mr. Holmes, seeing as you're fairly good—"

"I meant going out, John," Sherlock rolled his eyes, but his expression remained expectant, "We can make this work."

John simply shook his head, giving him a sarcastic laugh that went straight to the hollow of Sherlock's chest, and felt like a thin, fine shard of ice travelling through as he saw John's thin lips curl in a sneer, " 'This' is nothing, Mr. Holmes. You should either learn to live with it, or simply wallow in confusion. I cannot possibly use any harsher words. You must learn to take the rejection, even if—"

"Even if _what_?" Sherlock pounced on it, "How many times do I have to drill through that thick skull of yours that we can? You just don't seem to trust me."

"There's no point, Sherlock," and for a split second, Sherlock saw the deep anguish in John's eyes, before they were thinly veiled by that ever-stern expression, "I have told you countless times during the da—study date," he remarked, mortified at Sherlock's growing smirk, "that all of this is a huge misunderstanding—!"

"Then why did you come?" Sherlock asked directly, "Let's not play games like children, and be the adult you crave so much. Tell me, why did you care enough to come?"

The corners of John's mouth dropped as he gritted his teeth at how frustrating Sherlock was being, or how frustratingly sensible he was being. He clenched his fists as they shook beside him, in the immediate danger of colliding with his ridiculous cheekbones. He sucked in a sharp breath, and that stiffness of posture was all that Sherlock needed to know. Sherlock straightened up, and wore his jacket back.

"You care for me, John Watson, much more deeply than you realise. Otherwise you wouldn't have eaten those cherries in spite of your allergic reaction. And don't tell me you didn't, you know you can't hide it from me!

"Tell me what is it that I'm not doing!" Sherlock demanded, "I'll leave uni if I must," his voice was solemn, and it didn't quiver one bit as he spat out the cold, hard, emotionless truth, "If it means being with you, I'll leave. I don't want to attend anyway."

John coloured deeply, and turned away, "Good night, Mr. Holmes. Wish you and Ms. Hooper the best of luck for the exams."

Sherlock simply watched his retreating figure getting smaller and smaller as time and space brought that distance between them. He shouldn't have said that, he realised. Instead, he should've taken his chance and leaned forward to kiss him. After all, all the signs were there. John was continuously glancing at his lips, licking his own and his pupils had become brown instead of deep blue. He should've wrapped his arms around John and kissed him.

And then he thought that it was an even worse idea.

John became smaller and smaller as he walked away, as he put the distance between them, the distance that Sherlock _loathed._

Or maybe Sherlock had become bigger, hovering high up in the air, towering over the sky, so large that everything seemed small and insignificant now.

At that moment, anything was possible. There was ample, overwhelming evidence.

But the doubts, understanding neither reason nor logic and although supported on the basis of logical reasoning, returned, and everything became normal and bland again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, the Italian Salad that John asks Sherlock to order for himself is supposed to be one of the worst recipes ever, or so I've heard =P


	14. Chapter 14

John slipped into his bed at 3 a.m. after the New Years' Party, completely smashed, having drowned himself in alcohol. He hated Poles, he decided. And more than that, he hated partying Poles. He was tempted to say no to them, but considering the fact that no one ever lived to have said no to a partying Pole, he simply got along with it. He had dragged his aching body upstairs to his flat and miraculously to his bedroom, complaining about how bright the lights were to anyone who cared to listen, and the most pathetic part was that he couldn't even take a one night stand with some random girl. Although he usually didn't do one night stands, that was when he was in university and now he was an adult, and on top of that a professor, it seemed a shame that he was starting the New Year without a girl sleeping beside him.

"Hey," came a hypnotising deep voice from somewhere near the window. John tried to think whether he had left it open, and to the mildest of his surprises, he found that he couldn't. Although it was New Years' Day, there wasn't any snow falling, or any snow out in the street.

"Am I dreaming?" he managed clumsily to Sherlock, who was watching him with a sadistic smirk on his face, this time in the same white shirt and the sky blue jeans, the way John liked him best. Although, he had to admit to his drunken mind, he liked Sherlock more when he was _out_ of them.

Since that one time in the rain, Sherlock's body had haunted him, day and night, and John wasn't sure why. It wasn't supposed to be sexy, and yet it could make him hard faster than a plug could (and NO, he had never used a plug that anyone knew about anyway, there were a lot of insane things he did in uni that he preferred to keep under covers and the sworn secrecy of bro code).

Besides, he knew that Sherlock was _romantically_ interested in him, not sexually, or at least he pretended to think so. Seducing John was his cup of tea, but Sherlock had never made a physical move on him, except for caressing his fingers in the lab or in the parking garage. John tried not to think how _good_ Holmes would feel beneath him if only his fingers could feel so...

All thoughts took flight from John's mind as Sherlock approached him, or rather strutted across to him, resting one of his palms on John's thigh, as he climbed on top of him, rather than what John imagined in his fantasies. At least dreaming about him wasn't illegal. But the way he dreamt could very well be.

Sherlock bit his lower lip as that smirk failed to grow. He dipped his head, and his fingers worked his belt off, his voice dreadfully sultry, "You tell me."

John swallowed upon seeing his lustful eyes as his lips trembled upon the arduous task of forming words, his breath shuddery as Sherlock licked the bulge through his jeans, "W—Why?"

"How much do you want me?" And before John could react, the jeans had vanished and he was only in his grey boxer briefs and his cock was straining through the fine material beautifully. It wouldn't have made any difference if he were naked. Sherlock was watching him, and the only way John knew that this wasn't reality was the absence of his ever-observing penetrating stare.

Don't think about penetrating, his mind thought uselessly.

"F—fuck," he groaned, trying not to look into Sherlock's eyes and give up.

"What was that?" Sherlock's voice was incredibly normal for someone who was palming John's cock carefully, almost worshipping. An expression of intense, taut pleasure flickered across John's violently red face, he could barely watch his body going against him, and surrendering itself to Sherlock's palm, his fingers as if he were a horny teenager. He fought valiantly the temptation to take Sherlock's hand and shove it inside his briefs. He had been aching for it for four months. For one hundred and twenty two days. John's alcohol-weakened mind could not do the rest of the calculation ahead. He hated himself for being so out-of-control when his student could easily be his own master.

"S—stop..."

"You don't want me to," Sherlock bent down, and all John could see was his tousled head resting needily between his legs, "So glorious..."

John knew that this was another of those weird dreams, because Sherlock would never ever have said those words from his self-important mouth.

"Kiss me," John tried to mouth, but his throat muscles stopped working as he felt Sherlock's mouth on his cock through the cotton of his briefs. He could _feel_ the saliva, the wetness soaking through, although he wasn't sure whether it was Sherlock's mouth, or his pre-cum.

"No," came a low throaty voice from between his legs, and Sherlock licked his erection, and pressed his nose to the material. John's hands finally managed to free themselves from whatever invisible grasp there was on them, and instead of shoving Sherlock away from his hardness, he managed to entangle his fingers through Sherlock's hair, "You like that, don't you? Every time... you fucked Jeanette, you thought of _me_."

John whimpered, successfully making the bed shake against the wall. A bit of plaster broke off, and the landlord would give him a talk on that, but he didn't care, not with Sherlock's damp, humid mouth licking his bulge, not with his mouth travelling upwards, and softly nipping the flesh beneath his navel where the hair curled, and down as his teeth and fingers reached the waistband of his briefs. Almost unconsciously, John rolled his hips up, helping Sherlock take them off and throw them away on the floor.

And this time, when John looked up at towards him, there was not a single piece of clothing on his body. The muscles and the firmness of the chest was just as he remembered them to be from that day, his pink nipples were perked up in shameless excitement. John grabbed the base of his neck, and forced him forward, wanting to ravish him but Sherlock stopped at a torturous distance from John's lips. He could _feel_ the hot breath on his damp lips, he could see Sherlock's pupils and was still not able to process what was there, his mental processes were so shut down.

Only he had that effect on him, once Sherlock began, John just couldn't _stop._

"John..." he moaned softly, but his voice came out as only like a dying man begging for a drop of water, and making John almost come in his hands, which were wrapped around his cock now, "How many times a day do you think about me?"

John closed his mouth shut, and he rolled his hips again. Sherlock let go of him, and without warning, John felt the truly nerve-wracking-building-burning-skull-cracking sensation of Sherlock pining their twin erections together, "More times than I b—blink," he gasped, "Sh—Sherlock..."

"I want you to fuck me," Sherlock stated in a smooth voice that sounded almost comical, making those explicit fantasies burn in John's mind's eye, whenever it felt like a twinge in his cock in the most inappropriate of times, "Over and over again, till _you_ can hardly bear it, till it _hurts_ so much that you feel ashamed to go to an andrologist because he's going to call you a filthy pervert, _professor_. I want you to fuck me so hard that when you see me limp even after weeks, you think of _this_."

That was the worst part. Even though Sherlock was the one begging for John's cock, John still felt like he was bottoming and that Sherlock was on top.

"Sherlock..." he groaned, because there was nothing else that he could do, as Sherlock's mouth travelled down the line of his sternum, marking a salacious path through the hair that curled below his navel down, and he finally gave John a dirty look, a truly dirty, wanton look. John shuddered at that. But if it was out of danger or out of need, he had no clue.

"Yes..." he hissed through clenched teeth, as Sherlock took half of his length into his mouth, his cheeks hollowing, and his eyes miraculously fixed on John's. John closed his eyes, biting viciously down on his lower lip. He wanted to reach out and shove Sherlock's head down and down until he took in his full length, and he rolled his hips again as he felt Sherlock's teeth and his tongue travelling up and down him. He wanted him so bad, he wanted to be inside him so bad that it seemed like a crime to fuck him as bad as he wanted to.

Sherlock's fingers curled around the base, as he removed his mouth from him just to enjoy the look of protest on John's face. It served him right. After all, there's only so many times a person could take rejection.

"Man-whore," John swore under his breath, desperately reaching out for Sherlock's hands, his touch on his filthy cock again, "No... p—please...."

Sherlock smirked, "Because you said so nicely," and John gave a violent start when he felt the damp, dark heat of Sherlock's mouth swallow the excited flesh again. He licked it sloppily, too excitedly for someone with unwavering self-control, and John whimpered as well as he could in his drunken state. Even in this manner, it was much, _much_ more erotic than some of his best experiences with women put together.

John rocked his hips against Sherlock's mouth, almost bruising his lips with his fervour, while he effectively kept him pinned down between his legs. He could feel his tongue playing around with his flesh, and he was _far_ from close. He wanted this to go on all night. In his sober state, he would've killed himself out of shame to hear those obscene, erratic noises that he made against him.

"I _hate_ you," he growled, and Sherlock simply whimpered against his skin, going even harder and suddenly, before John was ready, he felt tripping off the cliff, not knowing whether the next step that he took would send him tumbling down to the depths or float away and fly. He wanted to come inside Sherlock's mouth, to see him suffocate, and punish him for what he was doing to him. But John could do nothing. He simply shut his eyes as he felt the deep rumble of Sherlock's baritone ringing in his ears.

"Happy New Year, John."

But before he could grab Sherlock's hair, he had already removed himself, and even if John's eyes were shut, he could feel Sherlock watching him spasming under the blinding force of his own orgasm. Hastily, John replaced Sherlock's fingers with his own, rubbing himself frantically as he came hard in his hands.

"Come here," he pleaded, and surprisingly, Sherlock obliged, taking John's softening member in his mouth, and licking away his ejaculate, watching him with a dangerous glimmer in his eyes. John blinked, feeling at peace as he felt Sherlock's figure wrap on top of his. Sherlock had not come after him, or even before. Without being aware of it, he slid his hand down to where he was expecting Sherlock's cock to be.

John opened his eyes in dismay, and the beige walls of his bedroom stared back at him. Sherlock wasn't there. And snow was back in London, with drunken people about in its street snogging everyone they could lay their eyes, or rather their grip upon.

If only this were true.

John felt drool trickling down his mouth, as he tried to remember Sherlock's face as he came in his hands. To his agony, he couldn't.

* * *

One torturously long Christmas vacation and New Years day later, Sherlock and Molly were back in London from his family house in Lincolnshire. Mycroft had declared that he loved Christmas for a change, while Sherlock had declared the opposite quite understandingly. And it had all become possible because Molly had gone over for Christmas at Sherlock's parents' house, and obviously she had dragged Sherlock with herself because, no matter how well she and Mrs. Holmes got on, Molly always felt intimidated by her, especially her piercing eyes, which according to her, were alright on Mycroft and Sherlock, but not on a woman.

And they were back in university. Everyone went loony with results, checking the bulletin board with their hall tickets in their hand. Some were jumping, waving their fists at having passed. Carl Powers was somewhere a few metres away, shooting Sherlock several murderous glances at topping every time, despite not being the most sincere student, and despite not working hard at all. Some students, mostly girls were crying, and some boys, in an act of fake chivalry, were lending them their shoulders to cry on. Sherlock simply rolled his eyes at the melodramatics around him. Molly came around, her face shining with happiness. Sherlock thanked God for that. She had cried buckets after her breakup with Greg, and now it was better to see a smile on her sweet face.

"Sherlock!" She came and pulled him into a tight and truly uncomfortable-rib-cracking hug, "I'm seventh!"

Sherlock hugged her back unenthusiastically, "Great, congratulations." She frowned at his unenthusiastic tone.

"What's wrong?"

He settled on bottom step of the staircase again, "I'm bored. It was much better when you were crying for Gavin."

She looked at him, utterly shocked, but Sherlock did not seem to register that, "Sherlock?"

"Please Molly," he put a hand up, "I have no time for your—"

"Isn't that Jim?" she pointed at the short, slim dark-haired Irish boy shaking hands with Dean Hope, "From the award function?"

Sherlock's head snapped in that direction. Sure enough, without a suit hiding his meagre body up underneath, Jim looked like quite the modest and working-class-parents sort of student, who was probably there on a scholarship of some sort. Carl Powers turned in his direction, and was now really confused about who to hate more: Sherlock or Jim.

Although, Molly watched the boy with some fascination, Sherlock only observed the Dean's demeanour. They seemed a little too friendly, or maybe he was just imagining it. Jim was the sort of boy who seemed to be able to socialise without any effort.

"He had his eye on St. Bart's," Molly informed him, "but I didn't think he was serious. I thought he was joking."

Sherlock frowned at that. Why would a student like Jim go for St. Bart's instead of a more reputed one like Cambridge or Oxford? The only reason Sherlock was here was because his brother had decided for him and because Cambridge or Oxford, it made no difference to him, and the only reason Carl Powers attended St. B's because he had been late with his college applications, or so Molly told him.

Maybe it made no difference to Jim as well? Could he be that intelligent?

"How do _you_ know?" Sherlock turned to her all of a sudden. Molly blushed pink at that.

"Well, we... I—we exchanged numbers... and we kept in touch over the holidays..."

Sherlock considered it for a second, and then a possibility struck his head, one he hoped wasn't true.

"Is that why you broke up with Graham?!"

Molly turned violently red, shaking her head, "It's Greg." Sherlock's eyes narrowed.

"So _that's_ why you broke up with him?!"

"Hey, you can hardly be considered his attorney," she protested, "And since when did it matter to you?!"

That shut him up. Why was it bothering him that she had broken up with Greg? It was good after all... He was annoying and he always smelled of engines and punk music, not to mention the one time he had lent Sherlock some car parts for free, saying that he could do at least that much for Molly's best friend.

Sherlock looked down at his hall card, and then back up to see Jim's wide brown eyes on him, burning with fascination, a crooked smile dancing on his face. Sherlock suppressed a shudder, and simply dumped it in his bookbag, "We should go." he remarked to an apologetic Molly, who looked guilty for having lashed out at Sherlock like that.

* * *

After the lunch break, Sherlock as usual buried his nose into a book completely unrelated to the syllabus he was supposed to study. Molly was chattering away and they were all waiting for Dr. Watson to arrive. He had missed him so much over the holidays, although he pretended not to, and the only thing which kept them connected was his phone and the numerous texts they had exchanged, although he was always the one who initiated them, he could tell by the time John took to reply that he thought intensely about what he was about to send as a text. They had exchanged only two phone calls, during which Sherlock had stolen away to a deserted corner of the little village, imagining John there with him, imagining him arguing over the things they argued over on the phone. Sherlock cherished each and every single moment of those phone calls and simply counted his days back to when he would get to see him again.

Suddenly, he felt a foreboding presence beside him, followed by the most childish of squeaks. "Hi, Molly!"

He looked up to see Jim standing there, picking at the strap of his bookbag. Sherlock looked him up and down. At close proximity, he looked like a scholarship student, with bitten nails, and socks that did not match. The strap of his bookbag had been sewn into place three times, and his hair was mussed up.

Even though Jim had addressed Molly, he was looking at Sherlock with a calculating expression. There was a heat to the boy's eyes which only he could detect, and nobody else.

To his surprise, Molly was pleasantly flustered, "Jim?! Hi! I didn't know you were sharing class with us!"

"Second year anatomy," said he, showing her a sparkling new schedule, "Want to introduce me to your charming friends?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes dramatically at that. As much as Jim put him off, he really had half-a-mind to warn him, when he heard the pleasant all-clearing mellow of John's voice flooding the hall, "Yes, please settle down... Ms. Aldrin, could you take the attendance please?"

Sherlock looked up from his book, and stared at John expectantly. It had been so long since he had seen John. He had wanted to pay him a visit over the holidays, but sadly, Lincolnshire was a far way from London. John looked so much better after the holidays, clean-shaved and much more refreshed. He had bought a new pair of glasses for himself, although the older were much better...

"Can I sit here?" came an intrusive, diabetes-inducing voice which ate away John's thoughts out of his mind. Jim was looking at Molly hopefully, who was asking Sherlock get up and let Jim move in.

"No," Sherlock promptly declared. Molly flushed violently and shot him a murderous look, "Yes, he can."

Sherlock looked up at Jim challengingly, who stared back into his eyes faux-innocently, which was something only Sherlock could detect, he thought. He didn't know what it was, but he found himself automatically getting up and let Jim sit between Molly and him. Molly did not seem troubled in the slightest, as she shifted away to create some space between them.

There was something odd about the boy. Although Sherlock wasn't a person who set much store by intuition, he still couldn't shake off the weird feeling he got as he felt Jim squirm beside him.

John turned around, and after almost a month, their eyes met and lingered over each other's faces, as if trying to record what changes the holiday has brought over them... well Sherlock had certainly got a little healthy, before they turned to the person sitting next to him. Sherlock felt immeasurable amounts of annoyance at that. He thought that John's eyes rested on Jim longer than they did on him.

"What's your name?" John asked him, even though he knew his last name. Sherlock remembered how John had asked him _his_ name when they had first talked "officially".

"Moriarty," he replied softly, almost a lisp. One of the boys laughed in another corner of the hall. John nodded smartly at that, and then declared that they were going to have a welcome-back sort of test, and passed them their worksheets. Sherlock saw Jim take out a perfectly new pen out of his bookbag, with no scratches on it, and its lid intact. Sherlock looked at his, and only heaven could help him.

They began. Sherlock could feel Moriarty beside him, his left against Sherlock's right as he furiously wrote his answers down. Moriarty was clever, intelligent, and Sherlock watched in dismay as he answered the last two questions the first—

"Mr. Holmes," Dr. Watson called out, "Eyes on _your_ paper."

Sherlock frowned at him, at his stern face. It was not like he was going to cheat, was he? The professor's eyes met his, and the severity did not drop away as a hoax. He rolled his eyes and went back to his paper, only bothering to answer the last two questions only, and damn, they were hard this time. The more he thought how this new boy got answers so quickly while he, the prodigy in Biology didn't...

"Time up!" Dr. Watson declared, walking the rows between his students’ desks and simultaneously collecting the papers. Sherlock could see the incredulity plain as day on John's face upon seeing that his paper was completely blank. He simply sighed, assuming that Sherlock was pulling another trick to stay behind during his free time. Well, he needed to talk to him as well.

"Sir?" came a meek voice from Sherlock's side. Jim held out his paper, smiling sweetly at John, and somehow, Sherlock felt as if he was being paranoid, but there was a sickening glint of malice in Moriarty's innocent big brown eyes. John muttered something incoherent and collected Molly's paper too.

"Meet me after class, Mr. Holmes," said he sternly, managing to keep his voice even. Sherlock knew better, "Go to hell."

John turned around at him in astonishment. Sherlock had _refused_?

"Excuse me?"

"You can't make me, professor!" said he, and stormed out of the room. John simply sighed exasperatedly, and looked at Molly for help or some sort of explanation. She simply shrugged her shoulders.

Sherlock turned around the corner, and retreated to the gents' lavatory till the whole lecture room, and particularly Molly and Jim had vanished. He had felt Jim give an involuntary start near him, and somehow he felt that it was better if Jim didn't know anything about their arrangement. Something was not right, and taking precautions never hurt, did it? Upon seeing the coast was clear, he peeked his head into John's lecture theatre, and then barged straight in, his eyes shining endearingly with happiness.

"Hey," he managed croakily. John looked him up and down, and smiled, a relaxing departure from his stern lips and eyes before, "Sit down, Sherlock."

Expecting something more intimate from him, Sherlock's hopes were dashed when John held up his test paper, "What the hell is this?"

Sherlock crossed his arms and folded his legs, "Test paper, don't state—"

"I'm not joking, Mr. Holmes," John snapped, "I'm trying my best to ensure that you don't waste your life, the least you can do is—"

"I topped," Sherlock reminded him, "Again. Anything else?"

John propped his forehead between his fingers and shook his head, "Not for long, Sherlock. James is an equally brilliant student," Sherlock knew who he was talking about. He knew. James Moriarty, the prodigy in mathematics and every subject that existed on the face of the earth. What a boring person!

"I thought you weren't allowed favouritism," Sherlock observed with a slight smirk, while trying not to be annoyed that Jim's name had to come up between their cherished little meetings.

"You're not my favourite, Mr. Holmes," John shook his head, standing up in his seat, and rubbing the chalkboard clean, "I—"

"Then who is it?" Sherlock asked, and the swift glint of eye was all that he got as a warning before Sherlock moved his lithe figure smoothly off his chair and around to John’s side of the desk. John tried to move away, make a valiant effort to create space, but then his back hit the cold chalkboard behind him and all he could do was press against it, with Sherlock's odourless breath falling softly and headily on his face. It was hotter than what John imagined in his dreams, "Is it that girl," he could feel Sherlock's words branding themselves on his skin, "the girl who shoves her breasts in your direction all the time, or is it that tall lanky boy Isaac? Or is it Molly?"

"Mr. Holmes—" John leaned forward on his own accord, looking from his eyes and to those distracting cheekbones. Sherlock drew away, seemingly satisfied, leaving John with an awkward boner as he tried to hide himself behind the desk, but he suspected that Sherlock had already seen it.

"There. You said it," and with that, he strode out of the room, leaving John burying his face in his palms.

* * *

It was after a week that John decided that he had had enough of Sherlock's daily games.

Now, the new boy Jim was a part of their group now, and John tried to ignore it during the class, but his teeth clenched on their own accord when he saw them sitting together, almost pressed side to side. John knew that there wasn't enough space on the last bench, and he wondered why Sherlock did not come to the front benches. After all, it would surely avoid the congestion and it also was a lot closer to John than sitting at the back—

Oh no, he did not just think _that._

Why he felt like that, he had no idea. It was not like he had some claim over Sherlock. He was his student, and yes, sometimes (twice a day) he had frankly disturbing and arousing dreams about him, and John tried not to think that he was a bit too old to be having wet dreams about a boy ten years younger than him... but still, what the hell was Sherlock playing at? Was this his pathetic plan? To make John jealous by hanging out with a boy who seemed attracted to Sherlock but the way Jim's gaze lingered on him when he looked away? Well, it wasn't working, and John tried to come up straight and tell Holmes right on his face that he could shove it up his impertinent, self-centered arse.

Thinking about his arse certainly did not help. John shook his head as if aiming to clear his head with that.

Big whoopee, so that was the genius called Sherlock Holmes' grand plan: seduce John, and then make him jealous? John did not realise why Sherlock was so bloody persisting about this. Maybe because he was refusing him so much... yeah well, today would be the last time he was going to refuse Sherlock bloody Holmes. After this, even if Sherlock decided to hang himself, he will not care. He will not let himself and his mediocre life get in the way and the progress of Sherlock's life and career. He was going to ask him to stop following him everywhere, he needed to stop staying after class, stop texting or calling his mobile, stop following him to the cafe, and stop ordering his favourite salami sandwich. He kept repeating them in his head over and over again.

He banged furiously on Sherlock's black door, so hard that the brass letters of 221B could come falling apart.

"Go away!" came a voice that was unmistakably Sherlock's, "Mrs. Hudson isn't here!"

John simply sighed, and took out his phone. He just couldn't take it anymore.

**_I'm downstairs._ **

He typed it, and sent it. Sure enough, the door opened and Sherlock was there in his pyjama pants and his blue-dressing gown wrapped across his body. He looked puzzled as to what John was doing here, of all places. John tried not to swing his fist into his cheeks, and willed himself to stay calm. He acted like he owned him, and now he simply was wondering what the hell John was doing up in there in front of his flat.

"Come in," Sherlock offered, and John refused, running through his mind the various reasons but now, his original crusade was lost as he fumbled in his mind for the reasons.

"Don't be ridiculous, it's frosty out there."

John wanted to tell him that he would rather freeze to death rather than... and then he saw Sherlock barefooted, and decided that Sherlock wouldn't want to have the conversation there, "Alright."

Once the door was closed behind them, Sherlock waited patiently for John to start, and John almost wished he had brought hint cards along with him to help him along.

"Sherlock... you... you need to stop this, alright? Now, you're playing with not just my life, but your life as well. You should understand..." he raised his voice when he saw that Sherlock wasn't taking even one inch seriously, "you're almost being a stalker."

"You like that," Sherlock slumped back against the banister of the staircase, "I see your cheeks flushing with colour every time, and believe me, I don't do anything that you don't want me to—"

"Oh yeah?" John challenged him, "You think so? Do you think I wanted to do this, coming out in this horrific weather to confront you, to give you an _deadline—_ "

"A deadline!" Sherlock scoffed, imitating him and John cut across him, "Don't you dare ignore me _this_ time! You want to know, Sherlock Holmes?!" John finally snapped, after having tried to be patient with Sherlock for months, "You want to know? Yes, I care! I care about you enough, far too much deeply than _you_ will _ever_ realise, and I'm not going to let myself sabotage _your_ future _because_ I care for you, do you get it? Nothing more than that, do you hear me? NOTHING more than that!"

He paused from his outbreak, and took a deep breath at that, looking down to control his anger. Finally, Sherlock spoke.

"Any chance you've had anything to drink today?"

"SHUT UP, Mr. Holmes!" John snarled, "What do you think you're playing at?! You think you can just try and seduce me—"

"Oooh! You make it sound so conspiratorial," Sherlock sneered, and John would've thrown in Sherlock's direction the first thing he could've lay his hands upon. He simply shoved Sherlock up against the wall angrily.

"You will leave me alone, Mr. Holmes, and none of your mind games work on me. You don't know the first thing about me."

This particular remark struck home, as Sherlock's expression hardened. "I have always known you better than you know yourself," he spoke, straightening up and taking a step towards him. "And I always will."

John jerked back, his eyes widening, feeling bewildered at the space between them decreasing rapidly. "You're a fool," he spat, turning away.

He felt Sherlock's hand grip his wrist. He tried to yank himself free but Sherlock's grip was surprisingly strong. He pulled him roughly around to face him, this time his eyes burning, the veins standing out like whipcord, his neck muscles tautening deliciously and his lips pursing. He was so close to him, and since the first time he had come here, he saw the enormity of everything, and how everything else seemed so much smaller, so insignificant in comparison to it. Panic and jolt shot through him as the look on Sherlock's face became mingled with something approaching desperation and urgent need.

"What... are you..." John managed to stammer, while the muscles in his mouth rapidly shut down as Sherlock leaned forward. He now couldn't pretend anymore that he hadn't wanted this, he couldn't pretend anymore that he had come to simply ask Sherlock to back off, because Sherlock would never back off... that's as far as he had known him, and deep inside, he knew that his visit would be pointless, but nevertheless, he had come, hadn't he?

Without warning, one of Sherlock's hands suddenly tightened around the nape of his neck and forced him forward. A second later, John's mouth came abruptly into contact with Sherlock's warm, humid mouth and inside of him it was as though every emotion that had been kept locked up in Pandora's box were now free to wreak havoc. He felt like he had hit his head on a boulder, and was now dead somewhere in a field where cows and the police were brooding over him.

Sherlock's hands clamped around his waist and his fingers sunk into the fabric of his jumper under the jacket, forcing him harder against him and seeming not to care whether he was hurting him or not. John's hands had somehow found their way into Sherlock's hair and he was clinging so hard to him that he was sure it must have been painful. Even if it was, Sherlock did not complain as he kept assaulting his mouth violently, and in a moment of weakness, as John's knees gave away at the intensity and somehow found their way between Sherlock's legs, and were now rubbing against his growing hardness painfully.

He no longer pretended to himself that he didn't know this was here where it was all headed, that this had all been inevitable from the start.


	15. Chapter 15

The one thing John had fought tooth and nail for, it was all crumbling away as he kissed Sherlock back, clinging on to him desperately for life. He found himself tearing at chunks of his hair, at which Sherlock's mouth only succeeded in bruising his lips as he turned them around, and in a second, pinned John against the wall, splaying his hands on his chest. John couldn't seem to understand how it happened but first he was in the doorway, yelling at Sherlock to leave him alone and the next thing he felt was his body being pushed back, backward against the wall, with Sherlock's grip on his waist so hard that John was sure he was going to leave purple bruises next morning.

Oh Lord, the next morning.

But John did not have a mind to think about such unimportant things when he felt Sherlock gasp in pleasure against him. John wanted all of him, and then more, and it was so hard not to have him then and there. He felt it against his knee, Sherlock's burgeoning arousal pinned against it. He wanted him back too, he wanted  _this_ , and that was enough confirmation for John. Unintentionally, John pressed into him harder and opened his mouth against his closed lips. Sherlock's kiss screamed of inexperience, but his eagerness to show John that he wanted him back too, that he wanted to be fucked so hard that he left him with a permanent limp, made up for it.

"Upstairs," Sherlock gasped, his breath hot and thickly laced with arousal, and sending an impatient jolt straight to John's cock, "Now."

No. John did not want to go. He wanted to rip Sherlock open there in front of him, right at the foot of the stairs as he would watch his flushed chest fall and rise rapidly, as he would hear the breath escape his mouth needily. That would be glorious.

Nevertheless, John pulled him down to stop him from talking and opened his mouth against his, delving his tongue inside Sherlock's mouth. He could sense a little hesitation on Sherlock's side, but as John licked the inside of his lower lip like just a brush, he couldn't help but hum pleasantly in John's mouth, the vibration sending a fierce jolt of electricity and arousal racing through his whole body, and lighting points throughout, as if all the sensitive spots that had all been connected together were all giving out because of the soft hums and coos Sherlock was making inside John's mouth.

If John had the ability to think, he would certainly have thought why he wasn't born gay after all, because nothing,  _nothing_  in the world could match the feeling of Sherlock's pinned against him, grabbing around for him like a drowning man, like John was everything that he had. John's hands slid lower and lower until they stopped at his waist. He felt Sherlock's hips buckle weakly against him, and then, before he knew it, he had grabbed two handfuls of Sherlock's arse, massaging it, forcing him deeper against him, not caring whether it hurt him or not. Through the thin material of Sherlock's pyjama pants, the fabric didn't feel like a barrier anymore. Instead it made Sherlock's breath hitch deliciously and gasp into John's mouth, as if surprised at his initiative and this time, his tongue met John's right where his lips ended and his began, entwining together as John turned them around, and threw Sherlock (gently) against the wall, effectively pinning him.

Even while making out, they were going to fight and argue, and John was deliciously receptive to the idea. Sherlock broke apart and smiled smugly, as if saying 'see what I mean?'

Sherlock took his jumper and his jacket off smoothly, and with a sharp tug, John tore the dressing gown away from his figure and kept kissing him deeply, while Sherlock tried to force him upstairs. It was hard, brutal, and as soon as they misstepped the first step, Sherlock could feel that he was falling down, collapsing right on the stairs, and he really did not care if he broke his hip, or maybe his vertebral column. He did not care if his back hit the stairs, or whether his head hit on the edge and he was now developing a clot somewhere in his brain.

Or maybe, he was just falling off a cliff. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected that the day John would be his that they would have to face such a serious crisis.

Reaching the bedroom was going to be a nightmare. Sherlock had half-a-mind to bugger him then and there, his physical need for John's body was sometimes so strong and so all-consuming sometimes that it scared him.

But then, he remembered that John might not be comfortable with the idea of penetration. Shame.

"No," Sherlock managed to breathe as they broke away again, "Not here." But John was having none of it as he shoved Sherlock painfully on his back. He lunged forward, and rejoined his lips with Sherlock's, pining their twin erections together. Sherlock couldn't help but wonder about how by simply kissing John he had developed a prominent bulge between his trousers.

Sherlock leant forward too, groaning and he really didn't know whether it was from pleasure or pain. Maybe both. But the only thing that mattered now was John's ragged breath falling on his cheek, and then stopping as if he had ceased to breathe, and his hands travelling over John's body, single bony fingers, each one distinctive from the rest. He was sure John could make out all five of them as they passed teasingly over his hardness.

John's mouth went dry at that, and he sucked on Sherlock's tongue hungrily, his hands tearing at his t-shirt as Sherlock's mouth engulfed his, and he felt the experimental press of teeth capturing his lower lip.

"John..." he moaned into his mouth, while his hands pushing at him, making him want to get up from the uncomfortable position. John did not want to get up. He seemed like he  _wanted_  to make Sherlock uncomfortable, he wanted to get back at him for making his life bearable, for making his life a life, instead of drudgery. Sherlock did not want to break their kiss, even if it meant undressing John under him, even if it meant running his hands all over his chest, his nipples which he could feel through his undershirt. He wanted to tear it with the animalistic lust that threatened to consume him. He'd buy John millions of t-shirts after this, and God damn him for thinking so.

Somehow, they made to the first landing. John was surprisingly strong for him even with his short stature, as Sherlock dragged their bodies upwards, not wanting to let air come between the space between them, but instead of him being the horny teenager, John broke their kiss and dipped his head to Sherlock's neck. Sherlock knew that he had always wanted to run his lips there, he had seen his eyes dart to his neck many-a-times. John snaked his tongue out and sucked his earlobe as Sherlock stopped his crusade of reaching his flat midway and closed his eyes, biting his lower lip so hard that it drew blood.

"Yes...." he moaned throatily, his voice rumbling and making the skin and muscles of his throat vibrate under John's lips as he rubbed his left cheek against the crown of John's head. John left the contact from his skin, and looked up at him. He already looked like he was close to it, and without any hesitation now, he slid his hand down between Sherlock's legs, cringing at how wet and hard he already was. He massaged his inner thigh while sucking on a particular patch of skin on his throat that he liked best, and Sherlock bucked his hips up, wanting more of John's touch. He was an anatomy teacher, for God's sake, Sherlock thought, and although he thought it wasn't going to hard for him to have Sherlock's debauched figure crying and pleading for him in moments, Sherlock was going to prove him supremely wrong.

"I... am going to shag you raw and  _senseless_  against every surface in your flat," John warned, and Sherlock shuddered at the force and the earnest cruelty with which he used his words, so harsh that Sherlock felt like  _he_ had hit his head somewhere so hard that he saw stars.

John seemed like he has decided that he had had enough. He seemed like he didn't care if Sherlock's landlady came by and decided to throw them out or even scream at them for shamelessness and decadency.

"You bad, bad teacher," he growled in response.

"Let's not.... forget.... the teacher.... part...." John punctuated every single of his words with a moan.

In a moment of weakness, John's head slammed against the wall as Sherlock turned them around and pressed him against it, sandwiching him between himself and the wall. He shed his t-shirt as John felt his shirt buttons coming apart. His neglected jacket and jumper had been abandoned in a corner along with Sherlock's dressing gown as his put his mouth on the hollow between John's neck and his shoulder. He snaked his fingers into his hair and revelled at the feeling of ash blond hair greeting his fingers as he ran them against his scalp. He had never expected  _that_  to feel so erotic.

"I won't," said Sherlock. He was pretty sure that if he kept this up all night, he would see John wake up next morning with serious amounts of welts on his body.

"Oh Go—uhn!" John's muffle cry rang out in the whole house, and it was truly fortunate that Mrs. Hudson wasn't there. With dizzyingly unerring accuracy, even though Sherlock had his eyes closed, his fingers reached for his left nipple under the fabric of John's undershirt and he gave him a pinch, "Christ, Sherlock!"

Sherlock simply snorted and turned him around to face the wall. Till then, he had let John believe that he had the upper hand. Not anymore.

In a second Sherlock pulled the undershirt over his arms, and John felt the hard press of Sherlock's erection against his arse. Unconsciously, he rolled his hips into his, as Sherlock's wiry arms encircled him and he dipped his head in the hollow between his neck and shoulder and began pressing kisses there, kisses which slowly turned into nibbling and sucking.

"Oh, you bad  _teacher_ ," Sherlock snorted into his damp skin mixed with sweat and his own saliva, "You've no idea... how long I've wanted to do...  _this_."

"Did you, now?" John breathed, splaying his hands against the wall and letting Sherlock take full advantage of him.

"Yes," Sherlock's fingers reached out to grab John's hair and tilt his head against his shoulder. John turned to him and Sherlock couldn't help but kiss him again. He could feel his eyes closing shut on their own accord as he bent his neck forward to lick his Adam's Apple, "But... you won't... like... hearing it..."

John sucked in a harsh breath and forced Sherlock's mouth upwards, guiding his lips for another kiss. but then, Sherlock did it again, however, this time his hands slipping under John’s arms, fingers pressing against John’s peaked nipples as he moved his mouth to a trickle of sweat marking a line through John's right temple. He licked it away.

"You'll come  _shamelessly_  when you hear of it."

And before Sherlock could react further, John had pushed him against the wall. Sherlock yelped in an undignified fashion as his backside hit the stairs again, and John climbed on top of him. 

"Don't you  _dare_  use that tone with me," Sherlock couldn't help but flinch as he felt almost like a helpless rabbit under John. Just one second ago, he had the winning hand, and now John's smaller figure was looming over him, his eyes hazy with arousal and almost brutal in lust. Nevertheless, he reached out and pulled John on top of him. Their mouths collided with the force of a hundred trains as Sherlock trailed his fingers over every single inch of skin, memorising the pattern, but at that moment that seemed futile and frankly unimportant with his brain working at half the normal capacity. Sherlock didn't remember how, but his back hit the door of 221B, and he pushed John away inside the flat. Almost immediately, their bodies collided with a thud. This was the beginning of everything, with the feeling of John's hardness poking into his inner thigh as he felt John's fingers brush against his waist and his thumbs disappearing under the band of his boxer briefs.

"I don't want anything between us anymore," Sherlock breathed in his ear. John couldn't reply except for a sound, followed by a "Stop!" as Sherlock sucked a bright red bite mark he had left right under his jaw.

"I," lick, "don't," nibble, "want," suck, "to," bite. Sherlock threw him on the couch but this time, John didn't hesitate when he saw Sherlock's erect cock in his eyes. Instead, he pulled him on top of him at once and turned them so that Sherlock was at bottom.

"People... will see," said he in his best professor voice.

"Let them," Sherlock pulled him down and opened his legs slightly in response to John's experimental hand travelling downwards, "They'll see how... un-gay you are—oh God!"

"I thought... God was a ludicrous fantasy.... designed to provide.... a career for the... the family idiot..."

"Keep saying that," Sherlock breathed as John bent down to attack the tendons arising on his pale neck, feeling the hot damp mouth on his skin and his hot length poking into John's thighs, "And I'll make it sure that even the halfwits ... ugh, J—ohn.... see that.... the shape.... corresponds to... m—lips... only mine..."

"Stop.... talking," John growled.

"Sure,  _professor_..." said he in his usual simpering voice. This time, to Sherlock's utter foolishness (and John wondered how a "over-analyser" like Sherlock could be so foolish during sex), he tried to throw John off him in an effort to gain dominance, they both ended up on the hard floor greeting them head first. Sherlock was the quicker one to straddle John's hips and letting his fingers roam southward, way too southward.

"You had... come for this, hadn't you?" Sherlock asked with a smirk as John opened his mouth for a kiss, eager to stop talking and get down to "business". But Sherlock, with his smartarse mouth was always eager to talk, "You knew... this was going to happen... you knew... Mrs. Hudson won't be there..."

"I'm... stop, Jesus Sherlock, the students will see!" John's voice rang out clearly at Sherlock's attempts to make the bite into a hickey, even as he helped Sherlock take his denim trousers off.

"Wear a turtleneck," he snapped, and migrated lower, until John knew that his fantasies were coming true. Sherlock's mouth stopped near his navel, and his fingers reached out for his cock straining out through the material of his boxers.

"Don't.... say...." John began in an effort when he saw Sherlock's mouth opening and he expected him to comment on his cock, and John had no idea what one could say and also, he had no idea how to answer to Sherlock's rude comments. But what he hadn't expected was Sherlock opening his mouth and lowering himself to replace his palm with his mouth to lick his erection through the fabric of his boxer briefs.

"Finish it," Sherlock demanded as he slid his fingers into the waistband, and John felt himself go fatally red, go embarrassingly hard (as if he wasn't hard already) as he saw Sherlock's tongue dart out every now and then and tease him.

"Oh...  _God_ , Sherlock—!"

" _Finish_  your previous sentence!" Sherlock deadpanned with ragged breaths in between, while John tossed his head back and groaned. He gave John one of those deadly smirks as he began removing those briefs to finally, finally be able to see him under him, the sight of John, _his_ teacher struggling to finish a sentence from his well-trained, self—conscious mouth.

His fingers curled around the base and he shuddered involuntarily at the thought that he wanted John to fuck him with  _this_  balls-deep in him. Nevertheless, he kissed the head, feeling almost intimidated at the new sensations, better than what he had felt in those lonely showers thinking about the body hidden beneath that shirt and modest cardigan. He wrapped his lips around it as much as he could and took the head in his mouth.

John rocked his hips up at that. Sherlock took the unspoken hint and went a little deeper, as much as he could without gagging, abandoning his own member lying neglected between his legs as it gave a twinge for attention. He felt John's fingers burying themselves in his hair, and for a split second he thought that John was going to push him away, like he sometimes did in his fantasies. But instead they buried themselves deeper and pushed Sherlock's head deeper into him. John was withholding his sounds, and he could see his fingers clenching uncontrollably beside him, and Sherlock wanted nothing more than to hear John.

"I want to... hear you," he spoke breathlessly, withdrawing his mouth for a second. John couldn't reply, simply pushed Sherlock's head so much harder that he was beginning to gag on it.

"Oh God yes," John let out a strained choke, as Sherlock slowly began to mimic the actions John had performed inside his mouth earlier. Never in his wildest dreams he had imagined that John would succumb to his feelings for him so fast and so quickly. Over days, it had been something else he had been feeling for him, something unnamed, charged, even  _magnetic_ , and now that his mind wasn't surrounded by filters or barriers, he could see it plain as day. Somehow, even though it was completely irrational and stupid and even if the chances had been one to billion, somewhere along the line he had fallen in love with John and everything of his, everything that he was, even before he had kissed him, or maybe even before their "study date". It should've been stupid, it should've been silly, but it surprisingly wasn't.

Somehow, in the midst of all the flirting and everything, John had taken him apart. Not just then, a long, long time ago. He should've known when, he always did, and this confusion over the exact moment befuddled him because it did feel like it had felt months ago, when John had broken up with his annoying girlfriend.... but now that the realisation had dawned upon him, it felt. . . strange. His heart was beating faster than it had when he had had the longest wank of his life, or even when he had felt John's lips move in acquiescence against him. It felt the way like when a person was terrified, but instead, he was terrified of not going that way instead of the opposite.

He could feel John squirming under him. He was close, he was tethering on the edge, and hell, Sherlock hadn't even realised it but he was approaching his orgasm too. His fingers quickly went to his own cock and started inflicting generous amounts of massaging and kneading. He felt the vision go black around the edges, and bright at the middle as his seed burst out between his fingers and he stopped moving his mouth on John's cock as he felt his knees buckle. John gave an involuntary groan, and Sherlock almost felt like saying sorry to that even though he really wasn't in a shape to continue. If that was what love was going to do to him. . . he really had no idea whether it was good or bad.

Even though John's breaths could be practically heard on the street outside, Sherlock was still immersed in his own self-inflicted pleasure, and he didn't hear John groan. He had almost forgotten that John still hadn't finished.

"Turn!"

Before Sherlock could react, John had grabbed him by his hips and had turned him around so that he rested on his palms and knees. Suddenly, Sherlock felt like he couldn't just keep up, and although he was a sucker for speed, the rush of emotions through him was a fantastic blur and mess. It was not just erotic, it felt terribly terribly intimate. It came to him like vertigo, the overwhelming feeling of intimacy, the feeling of closeness with John. He knew that this wasn't hormones, because he of all people knew how chemicals affected the mind. This was much more, so much more than that. Miles above that, in fact.

He felt exposed, vulnerable with his backside on display for John. But much more than that, he could feel the sensation of John's naked sweating body pressed flush against his backside, of John's heart beating into his vertebra, into his spinal cord as John pressed frantic kisses on his waist and on his hip. Sherlock didn't know anything which could've felt more intimate that this.

"L—lube?" Sherlock tried to ask him in vain, but John was having none of it. He figured that John's cock was beaded and slick with pre-cum. It wouldn't make all that difference anyway. He forced Sherlock's legs apart, and urgently pushed his still-hard member into his tight, unprepared entrance.

"Jesus, fucking shit!" He could hear John gasp behind him. That was the final warning before he painfully thrust into him. Sherlock felt nothing but excruciating amounts of pain, followed by John's hands kneading his softening cock now, trying to restore it back to hardness. He needed something to hold, the leg of the study table perhaps as John wrapped his arm around his waist and thrust deeper into him. He had always regarded sex as an unnecessary exchange of bodily fluids, even in his numerous fantasies with John on top of him, or John under him. But at that moment, he was nothing if not glad to be able to  _feel_  John inside him and not with the barrier of a condom.

Sherlock wanted to stand behind as a third person and watch John's cock slide in and out of him. He wanted to see John's face, to look into his lust-fuddled eyes as he fucked him. He wanted to fuse to him, to never have him out of him. It was painful, damn it was and he felt his tears stinging, mingling with the sweat on his cheeks. Sherlock must have been screaming, whether out of pain or out of acute pleasure he didn't know. It truly was a mystery for nature how he managed to rock his hips and find a rhythm. John forced his legs wider apart and continued to fuck him senseless.

"Oh, John," his throat was raw and now he knew he had been screaming shamelessly, "Harder, John! Mo—unggh—more, John!"

He felt John's fingers clamp and almost sink into him, his flesh. Yes, he wanted this, John branding him as his as he took him apart hard and brutal, slow and intimate all at once, so much that when he looked into the mirror and dressed himself the next day, he would see how John owned him, and he would meet John's eyes the next day in uni and they would know what they had done and what they had become.

"Sh—Sherlock," John grabbed his hair and kissed and bit into his flesh, burying his nose deeper into the small of his back and Sherlock arched his back up and gave a cry of pain and surprise, "Sherl—Oh, Christ, I want you—so—want you so much—need you—"

"John—!" His voice rumbled, and John pushed himself deeper inside him with faster, more aggressive strokes as they both felt ashamedly conscious of the slap and thud of two bodies being thrust together in more or less harmony, something that Sherlock was fairly adept at picking up. Sherlock lost count of how many times John had called his name while coming into his arse as he kept kissing him. John, even in his dazed state, (and Sherlock now knew how difficult it was for him to do it) followed every single drop of sweat trickling across Sherlock's pale skin and he teased it, pressing soft, slow, deliberate kisses to him as he pulled out of him. Sherlock could still feel John inside him, and he had a hunch that he was going to feel that way for the rest of the week. John fell on top of him and this time, as their cocks were pinned against each other, it felt far from arousing. It felt warm, and grounding, and promising, the feeling of John's skin on his was familiar as if they had been together for years whereas in reality, they had known each other for only six months.

"I—That was..." Sherlock felt the compelling need to say something, but John simply brought his fingers to his lips to shut him up as they lay on the floor side by side in front of the two damning armchairs and the couch and the  _open_  door, but John didn't notice that. And Sherlock certainly didn't want to ruin the moment of lying in John's sweaty arms by pointing that out. Sherlock snaked a tongue out bravely and trailed it over John's fingertips, kissing them tenderly, carefully as it it was an experiment, only that  _John_  wasn't an experiment. This was real, solid, grounding and Sherlock couldn't help but revel in the feeling of Oxytocin rushing through him. He would've wanted to get up, grab a needle to collect a blood sample of it, but the alternative was much, much better: lying in John's arms and feeling his fingers trailing over his chest.

John Watson had taken him apart, in all ways a person could.

"You alright?" John asked, scanning his face for any discomfort. Sherlock felt his heart swell and his eyelids droop as he remembered the second orgasm that had torn through him. He grimaced a little, feeling his sore entrance with his fingers. He doubted if he could ever walk again and smile at the same time. He leaned in for a chaste kiss and John obliged while wiping the sweat away lovingly from his curls plastered on his forehead. Sherlock had never known John to be so rough and tender at the same time, or maybe that was just the mind-blowing, toe-curling sex that brought it in. God, the closeness felt good. So good.

"You... could've been... gentle," Sherlock removed his fingers to see a little amount of blood and John looked alarmed, "and used a condom... and lube .... and not torn... the tissue..."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be harsh," John looked at him guiltily, running his hands on his hips and straddling his hips with Sherlock's thighs, "But it felt good?"

Even as they lay in the remnants of their orgasm, it was only Sherlock Holmes who could roll his eyes even in such a state. He could still hear the need to be reassured, the craving for approval in John's voice. Well, he wasn't going to tell him that it was the best thing that had happened to him, and that coke and crack didn't even come close, "Ow, I'm sore..."

"Stop complaining!" John shifted closer to him and spoke in a less—than—annoyed tone at Sherlock's usual narcissism coming through even after everything, "Don't tell me you didn't enjoy every second of that!"

"This isn't just _'ow, I'm sore'_   sore. It's  _'_ _ow, I need to go to the ER and wear diapers for the rest of my life'_ sore."

They shared a smile at that, too spent to laugh at that. John nuzzled his nose in the crook of his neck and gave him an affectionate squeeze, uncharacteristic of his usual strict—teacher demeanour, and Sherlock let out a peaceful exhale, feeling thankful that he didn't give up on John for all the months he had persuaded him for the what it seemed now as inevitable. He had always shirked away from sentiment, but now that John was here, his exception to everything he had thought himself to be, looking flushed and spent and yet so needy, he finally leaned in for it. Pure and simple, he loved John. He was in love with John, and he couldn't determine the exact moment even though he knew that it must have been months ago. That was a mystery he was willing to let go unsolved.

Nevertheless, his voice came out as snarky, an extension of the defence mechanism he had developed in his younger years, but now he wouldn't need it, would he? Not with John looking up into his eyes like Sherlock was some sort of God.

"What was that for?"

But John just took Sherlock's face in his palms and kissed his pale sweaty forehead tenderly, "You need to down the thermostat... and maybe replace the carpet," he replied with a smirk that Sherlock could no longer see.

And maybe, just maybe, John loved him back too.

"And you insist that you aren't gay," Sherlock exclaimed wryly. John chose not to comment, except for a vague "I'm not".

"But you're gay for me."

". . . Maybe."

It was the best feeling in the world, as Sherlock closed his eyes to John's lips lingering over his forehead, his heart damaging his ribs permanently. He wasn't sleepy, not in the slightest. Even if it meant staying like that, God knew he'd want to be awake for the rest of his life.

He wondered if this was the best time to confess to John everything. He had almost shouted it out back when he had orgasmed for the second time, but. . .

He didn't as John opened his mouth for a kiss again. Tongues met, teeth clicked, mouths melted together as if he and John were fusing together by a strange composition of semen, sweat and intimacy, lips and fingers travelled over each other as John's smaller fingers slotted perfectly in Sherlock's. Holding hands, kissing slowly, honey-like slow, like they had all the time in the world. They did actually. They had all life in front of them. John gripped his shoulders and moved down to his throat, running his tongue over him, drawing small circles over and punctuating them with gentle kisses.

"Don't forget it, Mr. Holmes," said John, breaking away. Sherlock wanted to laugh quietly at that. He had always hated being calm and peaceful, and he had reason to suspect that John was of the similar species, but at the moment, when they were naked in every sense of the word, and with each other, together, quietude was much more favourable.

"What?" Sherlock came back to his senses, as he felt John's fingers teasing his inner thigh and palming his cock in a provocative manner. He tried to wonder if John had a kink of calling him Mr. Holmes instead of Sherlock, just like he had a kink of calling him professor. God damn him for being so dull headed in the matters of intuition.

"I meant it. Every surface of the house.  _Raw and senseless,_ Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock groaned and joined their mouths again. He was going to make John wear much more than a turtleneck.

* * *

This was the umpteenth time that Sherlock was groaning that day (well, technically that day because he and John had had quite too much sex past midnight), but this time, it wasn't from pain in his entrance, or the too hard bite under one of his nipples (John knew his body better than he himself did, but who could blame him? After all, he was his anatomy teacher), this time, the pain was in his head, and the only description which came close was that of a hangover, although he had never had one, but Molly always kept on talking about the graphic descriptions of pain she felt in her head...

Great! The one time he got to wake up with John sleeping beside him, his covers still warm and ruined from their activities last night, he had to think of Molly of all people.

Well, he certainly couldn't think of Mycroft. Molly was a better alternative.

Which reminded him that she had to come pick him up. He was thankful for that. Maybe he would have a morning go with John. He smiled to himself stupidly at the idea, and looked at the ceiling. Everything seemed different now. Just one night of sex and passion and his world had changed, the way he looked at things had changed. He knew that now he wouldn't be able to look at the couch or the kitchen table or the floor or even his bathroom walls without thinking (and smiling to himself) about what had happened there. His whole flat would remind him of John and the way he felt inside him. As if that was even necessary.

It had been the most memorable night of Sherlock's life. John had thought that he would tell him to back off, and instead it had only served as a catalyst hurtling them towards the inevitable. He could still feel John pumping inside him, hitting his prostate with the accuracy of a surgeon cutting through the layers of his patient's skin. It had been simultaneously too much and yet it was completely satisfying, and yet, it made Sherlock want more.

He turned to his side, and saw no one there. John wasn't sleeping beside him. It had been quite sometime ago that he had gone out. Maybe for a shower. Sherlock smiled to himself at the thought of a shower, and maybe another round of mind-blowing sex that John was certainly an expert at.

It took him some time to realise that the flat was completely noiseless. There were no sounds of a shower running. Sherlock decided to investigate about what John was up to.

He looked into the shower. There was no one. The previous bout of worry that he had felt when he hadn't seen John sleeping beside him was starting to return. There was no one in the sitting room, no one in the toxic kitchen, no one except for Mrs. Hudson's singing. She had arrived, and then Sherlock saw that his blue dressing gown was lying on his armchair. Only his clothes. John's clothes were gone. John was gone.

Why would he do that?

Sherlock looked around his flat to process the changes that had taken place. John had got up, he had not even showered. He had simply got up, fretted for sometime in the sitting room, and then, he had gone. Away.

He tried to subdue the panic rising in him. There was a perfectly logical explanation to it. John was a professor, maybe he had been called, maybe he needed to report early for something.

Sherlock tried to shrug it off like it was supposed to be alright. John was a professor, and he had to live with it, now that John was living with it. But he couldn't rest the deep unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach.


	16. Chapter 16

As John got off the bus, and walked slowly towards the university campus, he felt like his feet had turned to lead, heavy and slow, dragging up to his workplace, where he didn't want to go at all. From a distance, the building looked accusing in its whitewashed walls. John felt like every eye was darting past him and then doing a double take at him. Turtlenecks weren't very popular, and worst, they didn't help hide the angry hickey that lay right under his jaw.

He felt like the whole world knew about what had happened yesterday, as if everyone had seen him rush towards Baker Street and disappear into 221B, only to see him walking out of there in the morning with the sex hair and all his buttons done in the wrong places and his belt in his hands. He thought he could hear people whispering conspiratorially about what he had done there, and he wished nothing but to shut his ears in the hope that it would become bearable white noise.

He couldn't bear to stay one more minute in that flat, with Sherlock's suffocating presence beside him, with Sherlock's nose nuzzled in his hair and John's arm around his waist. He felt stiff, having not moved in his sleep throughout the night. He had opened his eyes and for one second, he had even moved closer to the comfortable warmth radiating from Sherlock's body.

And then he had realised what he had done.

His instincts developed from the one-night stands in university had prepared him for not giving out a start, but nothing could've prepared him for the sight of Sherlock's marble like skin peppered with bites and kisses and the gentle slow, streams of air coming from his slightly parted lips. Sherlock had never seemed so. . . human, so vulnerable before, and John shuddered involuntarily to think that it was all because of him.

He had extracted himself from the bed at once, and not dared to look anywhere at the bathroom, or the kitchen, or the floor or the sofa. Good Lord, what had he done? And that too, in his sobered and fully conscious state?

Then he realised that in a few minutes, Sherlock would be up too, and that thought that made him barge straight out of his flat and into the streets, on and on till he found a taxi. He hadn't bothered to put his clothes on properly, all he wanted to, needed to do was to get out of there, walk and just walk away, measuring his gait to the surging thump of his heart as if he could deny the agitation in their pace.

Everything had changed, and now outside St. Bart's, John could feel the unfamiliar vibes from the world around him, or perhaps the echoes of the vibes that he was sending into the space around him. He knew that now, he would never be able to look at Sherlock the same way anymore. He would take one look at his throat and he would remember how it had felt beneath his lips. He would see his fingers and would surely remember what they had done to him. The images flashing through his head would recount the previous night, a night that should never have happened, a night he would give anything to take back.

He walked into the campus, and although no one was really looking at him, John could feel the intensity of their gazes behind their averted eyes. He quickly rushed into the nearest staff lavatory and put his bookbag down, staring at his reflection in the mirror, his pristine hair and his well ironed clothes trying their best to hide every single patch of skin under them as much as possible. He sighed and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and his forefingers. He looked like a stranger to himself, hell he _was_ a stranger to himself now, because never, ever in his right mind would he have slept with a man, let alone Sherlock Holmes.

He saw his face in the mirror, which had become red just at the thought.

"Hey," came a honey-like baritone voice from the doorway as the door shut behind the newcomer, "I've been looking for you all over."

And before John could react, Sherlock had crossed the distance between them and taken John's face in his palms, kissing him deeply, full on the mouth, melting and desperate lips moving over his, like dark chocolate mixed with slow poison in equal parts. John felt frozen at the intimacy of the act, his body had become as rigid as stone, as frozen as ice. He could feel Sherlock's tongue flicking across the seam of his closed lips as he kept kissing him, before breaking away breathlessly and joining their foreheads.

"Sherlock. . ." John began while the rest of his body was still paralysed, unable to shove him away, but Sherlock cut him off by running his thumb over his cheek.

"I understand why you left. . . you're a teacher, and I'm not complaining," said he quickly in one breath, smiling and planting one last kiss on his lips. John could hear utmost relief, and more than that, the desperation and plea in his voice _'don't you dare ever leave me like that'_ and the way he was trying to make him understand through those last four words that he was okay with everything as long as they were together, as he kept on babbling, as if the whole building would collapse on him if he stopped talking, "Anyway, I've kept Molly waiting at a distance and she won't let me in her car if I play truant on her with you so. . . I'll see you around."

And with a wink, he sauntered out of there, leaving John weak in his knees and his resolute to make his heart hard stronger than ever. He hadn't realised that he had stopped breathing for the entire time during which Sherlock was there.

* * *

Just a few minutes before the end of class, John walked the rows between his students' desk, collecting the papers as he went by and dictating the assignment for the next week. "As essay on the functions of. . ." his voice trailed off as he looked up and toward the door.

Sherlock was standing just outside his classroom, bookbag slung over one shoulder, hair mussed, expression desperate. John gulped, and forced his eyes away. He knew what was going to happen, and this time he wasn't going to be shut off by a kiss. It was high time that Holmes learnt where his place was.

"So, as I was saying, the essays on my desk on Monday, everybody clear? I'll see you all next week. Dismissed." John managed to keep his voice even, but only just. As the students filed out, groaning over grades and worrying over the immense workload over the weekend, John kept his chin tucked to his chest, walked to the front of the room, and gathered his things. One by one, every student got out and exited the classroom. He didn't trust himself in a classroom with Holmes anymore, or anywhere that surrounded them with privacy and four walls.

He heard the door open, and he clenched him fists. He could feel Holmes coming closer to him, his fingers picking at the strap of his bookbag, as if restraining himself from physical contact with John. John forced himself not to look up at him.

One more step, and he snapped.

"What are you doing here?" he seethed between near clenched teeth. It was all he could do not to shove Sherlock, not to swing his fist hard at those ridiculous cheekbones. It was all Sherlock's fault, all of his fault, "I've another class coming in the next ten minutes, and I need to eat—"

"Yes. . . but I wanted to see you." A wrinkle formed between Sherlock's brows. He licked his lower lip and then bit it. John could see that he was taken aback with the less-than-warm welcome, "I wanted to thank you for last night. . . it—it was beyond perfect, John. . ."

John shook himself. He looked at Sherlock's face, expression expectant and without remorse, his eyes positively glowing with happiness at the memory. He felt sick to his stomach.

"Last night was a mistake; it's wrong, Mr. Holmes." He tried to control his breathing, the volume of his voice. He tried not to think. "You could get expelled, and I could be sacked!"

"But—"

"No buts, Mr. Holmes." John tightened his hands into fists and kept them clenched at his sides as he settled down in his chair, his body positioned away from Sherlock. "You don't come find me, you don't talk to me, you don't follow me. We're done, alright? This—it's over. It never happened. Do you understand me?"

He did not look up to see Sherlock's face fall, all light leaving it, but he could hear his broken croak. John pretended not to hear it, "John. . .?!"

He could hear it over and over in that monosyllabic name: why he hadn't complained yesterday, or the time before he had let Sherlock suck him off, or the time before he had pumped into him like a bulldozer, or even the time when he had very willingly undressed him and thrown him on the floor to kiss him. . .

"Listen!" John looked up at him, all cold eyes somehow burnt around the edges in warning fury and voice seething with anger, "I'm sorry for. . . whatever happened. It was a mistake, and it should never have happened."

"So. . . you're just—you're just walking out? One night and that's it?" Sherlock's disbelieving voice came out, sounding like fingernails scratching over chalkboard.

He could hear Sherlock swallow something dry and painful down his throat, and he felt the same thing stuck in his as well. He could see Sherlock laying his heart bare for him, only to be broken and scarred. How could he have even expected that Sherlock would forget it all in a night? All this could've been avoided only if Sherlock had not gone so far with him. It was all his fault, John kept telling himself. He closed his eyes, wishing that this was all a bad dream and that he would wake up in seconds.

That did not happen.

"Just. . . go, please."

Without waiting for Sherlock to go, he unpacked a salami sandwich and began munching on it hurriedly. Sherlock looked at it, and then at John, and then at it, and then at John, back and forth, and then after what seemed like eternity, and even after John had finished his snack and turned to rub the chalkboard, Sherlock still didn't move. It was only after the class started to fill and one of the seniors smacked his head with a textbook that made John turn to him instinctively, that Sherlock turned around and walked away, out of John's classroom, and presumably, hopefully out of John's life.

"He's such a weirdo," one of the boys quipped.

"Weirdo? He's fucking messed up!"

"I heard he has those secret cams in the men's toilets where he spies on us, you know."

John tried to ignore his heart telling him to shut those boys up with a detention for the entire term. He turned his back to the class, removed his glasses and exhaled shakily as he stared at the chalkboard, trying to ignore his treacherous bleeding heart. Sherlock had walked away, and that was it, then, he thought. Sherlock was gone. He should be relieved, really. It was for the best, all of it was for the best. For Sherlock, and now he won't have any stupid professor walking around with him, wasting his time.

After all, he had done the right thing, and Sherlock needed to do the same too.

So why was there this intense pain in his chest?

Nevertheless, he pressed his fingers to his eyes and stayed quiet a long time, and even as the noise behind him died down, the one in his ears didn't. And if a tear escaped the left one, well, no one would ever be the wiser. Because he never cried. Never. Ever.

He silently wiped the single tear and turned to his class with that ever-stern, impassive expression on his face. Out of the corner of the blurred vision of his left eye, he could still see Holmes sitting in the last bench, arms crossed over his chest, long legs protruding from under the desk, expression petulant which was endearing and exasperating in equal parts.

"Boring!"

* * *

That day, Sherlock did not attend any of his lectures. He didn't care that all the teachers were marking him absent for every class, that Molly and Mycroft would be asking him endless questions afterwards, and that he would be dragged to his parents' house for the rest of the year. He didn't care about anything anymore. He flicked the lighter on as he settled onto the concrete at the roof of St. Bart's water supply tank, lighting his eleventh cigarette and watching over London, the only thing that remained unchanged through everything that had happened to him.

This was what Molly had always warned him about. She had been worried sick, scared for this, and now it had finally happened and he hadn't thought it through. Mycroft had practically _begged_ him to stay away, Molly had told him to be careful, told him that this was his teacher and that it will _not_ work out. There's only so many times a person could take rejection, and after a night that was the highest form of perfection, the best thing that could've happened to him, only for it to be called a mistake. . . there's only so much one can bear, and the man he loved saying that he was sorry for it was not one of them.

He drank in the cigarette smoke with supreme effort once again, flooding his lungs with cancerous soot. It was a mistake for John, the idea of it being a mistake, the idea that something that to Sherlock was so perfect, so beautiful, was being apologised for and asked to be forgotten was heart-wrenching.

He wasn't going to beg anymore. He wasn't going to fall to his knees in front of John and tell him that he loved him and that he wanted to be with him more than anything and that there was nothing else he had wanted so deeply in his life. He wasn't going to. Hell, he was done with telling John that they should be together and now John had made it clear that he didn't want to be. He had his pride, and at this point it was the only thing he had that would keep him going.

He was not going to beg.

Although he would, if only he knew that John would say yes back.

He closed his eyes, not really feeling the cold of February on his skin anymore. He looked up to see a jet flying up in the air, with a hundred people suspended miraculously in mid-air as the jet left a trail of gas stream behind, marking its path. He closed his eyes feeling chilling wind blow through his curls. . .

John. John on top of him. Naked, flushed, panting, sweating, delectable, beautiful. John inside him, his hands on him, his lips on his, on him, his back, his kisses trailing up his spine, up his chest, nibbling at him. . .

No. Love was a mistake, a defect like he had always believed it to be. Love was a lie ordinary people believed in to convince themselves that they were special, that they won't have to die alone. He had been weak for that one moment but that had been the urges of his transport, and not the infallibility of the fortress of his mind.

The irrational pain in his chest was so sharp that he could feel it with every quiver of his beating heart. When he looked at a person, he always scrutinised them sharply, leaving no detail out or unattended. But that day, when he looked deeper into John's eyes, deeper than he had ever looked, he had seen what John considered him as: a nuisance, an unnecessary and uninvited addition to the daily problems of his life.

He felt like he needed to throw up, but only it would not come up his throat. It was going to stay in him like a parasite and it was going to eat him away, slowly and gradually and painfully.

And so he forced it down, and down, by sucking in the soothing cigarette smoke.

Sherlock opened his eyes to see nothing in front of him. The phone buzzed in his pocket for the umpteenth time, probably texts from Molly, and several missed calls from Mycroft and Molly. He lit his twelfth cigarette and drank the smoke in, clearing his mind.

But John had kissed him in the morning. He had felt John's pulse beneath his fingers. Elevated, almost frantic.

Correction. He had kissed John, and John hadn't kissed him back.

His phone rang again, and this time, Sherlock picked it up, "What?"

"Sherlock," Molly's worried voice came out, "Where are you?"

"Nowhere," Sherlock growled into the phone, trying his best to keep his voice detached, "I'm studying, so stop disturbing me." With that he cut the phone. He knew that Molly would now keep asking him questions on questions, but he didn't care. He was an expert at turning a deaf ear to people, and even with her crying, he could ignore her to a point. His phone buzzed.

**_I'm going to lib to study with Jim. Ttyl_ **

At this, Sherlock wanted to get up, wanted to go to the library, wanted to lead her away from him. Truth be told, Sherlock did not like Jim around her, or around him in that fact.

Then he remembered that he was banned from the library. Another memory came to him.

_Oh Lord! That felt so good!_

_Jesus! You're such a troublemaker. . ._

_She's the only one I like arguing with. Always gets so moved by what I say. . ._

He had no idea what was going to happen to him over the weekend. What he was going to feel over the weekend locked up in a flat that only served to remind him of that one night.

The overly romanticised concept of broken hearts might be a start.

* * *

Sherlock walked towards the parking lot with Molly, barely listening to her ranting about how amazing Jim was and how brilliant and moreover, caring he was. He could barely keep up with it, how every single thing reminded him of John and how they had spent time there: the parking lot, the entrance of the university campus where he and John had first bumped into each other (quite literally) and he had taken his business card, where he hadn't even realised how this man was going to change his entire life.

Suddenly he felt a soft grip on his wrist. Molly was calling him to attention.

"You told me you would call yesterday, Sherlock. Why didn't you. . .?"

"I was. . . busy," Sherlock said quickly, in the hope of not saying something else. At this point, he really did not want to hear from Molly about how right she was and how she had warned him to be careful because he was his teacher.

But Molly's attention, and her gaze, was held not by his words, but rather at the beginnings of a love bite hidden under his jumper. Sherlock followed her gaze and tried to cover it up, at which Molly only stumbled backwards, her voice full of disbelief, "No. . . you possibly didn't. . ."

Sherlock didn't reply, although he knew that she had had an idea of one side of the story, a part he was rather masochistically fond of.

"Sherlock, you complete. . .! You didn't _tell_ me!" There was a beginning of a foolish grin on her face. Sherlock tried not to swallow an imaginary dry-pill down his throat. He smiled to himself incredulously. He was feeling nothing, nothing at all, as opposed to how he felt when he smoked thirteen cigarettes in total on the roof of St. Bart's. He felt completely numb, like something deep down inside him already knew that John and he could never be together, and that he had already made his peace with that.

But it wasn't the same way when he felt like he wanted to be around John all the time, just watch him and his absurd, tiny quirks, small flaws in his perfection.

"You were the one who said that no one ever tells their friends that they were having. . . sex."

Molly might not be as intelligent as Sherlock was but she did happen to notice the way Sherlock uttered 'sex'. She chose not to dwell at it. First times could get a little uncomfortable. She chose not to ask. Sherlock would tell her when he needed to, wouldn't he? She was his best friend, after all, and she told him everything.

"Who was it?" she asked in undisguised wonder. Sherlock just shrugged.

"Nobody you know."

"Yeah, but. . ." she gave him a girly and the frankest of smiles, a smile that usually made Sherlock give her a half-smile back, but this time it made his stomach twist and turn painfully as she pinched him playfully on the arm, "I'm happy for you, you know?"

Sherlock laughed at that, a hollow, weird and alien version of the real giggle he gave. He knew he sounded weird, and that normally, he wouldn't have graced _that_ with even a response. But Molly seemed not to notice as she continued about her own going-ons with Jim. Sherlock loathed it, he hated how something as human as jealousy licked up his spine as he listened to her playing happy couples with Jim Moriarty. If his mind hadn't been brimming with John, he certainly would've told her that the boy who she was seeing was gay.

"Hey, erm. . ." Molly began, "I'm. . . there's this. . . thing, I'm - I can't come tonight, I've got a - "

Sherlock nodded, knowing what was coming next. Going by the way Jim and Molly were speeding up, there was only one conclusion he could draw. He simply tried to sound preoccupied with a hum and looked out of the window, where he knew John would be sitting, waiting for his bus.

Although John did not meet his eye, that did not stop Sherlock from gleaning one last glance of him for the day.

* * *

He knew he wasn't supposed to follow John. He knew that.

It was just that John was everything he wanted to see and to be around, and John wouldn't talk to him and John didn't look at him, and it was all Sherlock could do not to scream how much he loved John, right there in the middle of class with Jim sitting beside him, arm brushing on arm.

The only thing that kept him from doing so was to allow himself the simple relief that came in watching John.

He watched John chatting with other professors in the bus stop in the afterhours. He watched John ordering coffee and his favourite salami sandwich at the campus cafeteria. He watched John lick his lips as he listened to other students' queries and he watched John fumble with the change in his pocket when he stopped to donate money to the student government's charity drive.

Sherlock knew he wasn't supposed to follow John, but if he didn't, he was sure he'd do something else. Something much worse.

He sat at the back of the classroom, elbows bent, forearms dangling carelessly off of the front edge of his desk. He didn't mean to stare; he couldn't quite help it. The only time he was allowed to look at John was in class. So in class, he looked.

He watched John carelessly, not caring if anyone called him a weirdo. He didn't know what he was trying to achieve by that. He simply stared listlessly ahead of him. John had stopped acknowledging his presence completely, in the class, in the cafeteria or even when they passed each other in the corridors, pretending that they had never made love. He looked behind him, and saw Jim and Molly kissing passionately as John kept his back to them. Although Jim was very nice and very respectful of Molly, he couldn't say the same for himself. Every time their eyes met, he could feel blood travelling backwards to his heart, cold and icy shards piercing and melting into him. Had he been in his right mind, he would certainly have voiced his concerns to Molly, knowing that she was the one who trusted in him, in all of St. Bart's, in all of the world, his only real friend.

Not John.

Because John had broken his heart and his trust in a way no one could have. He could've just said that he wanted sex and nothing else, and Sherlock would've gladly said yes to it, yes to everything for him. No, John had not trusted him, and in the end, he had ended up shattering Sherlock's too.

He would've been alright with just a one-night stand, if only John had informed him before. No, John had screamed in the four walls of _his_ bedroom that he wanted Sherlock in a way he had wanted no one else. He had said that, and even if it was in a daze of chemically-induced bliss, it still wasn't okay to be just pretending that this was all over.

So, he didn't tell Molly that Jim was gay.

Until that day. Unable to take any more of their romantic nonsense, he turned to them and declared unfalteringly and needless to say, loudly, "Gay."

The class turned around to look at him, and Sherlock could see out of the corner of his eyes that John had kept his head down, avoiding any sort of contact with him. Molly and Jim broke away before anyone could spot them, and she turned to Sherlock to frown at him, who had his eyes resolutely fixed on Jim. Jim's eyes widened in surprise and a much smaller portion of victory for an infinitesimally small moment, and if he didn't give Sherlock the creeps, he would've claimed that it was a trick of light. He could practically feel Jim's eyes raking over his skin, crawling under it. It both unnerved and thrilled him, to his shock.

"Sorry what?" Molly asked, her eyes narrowing.

Sherlock cast a quick eye at the rest of the classroom, some of whom were watching the three scholars with indifference and interest alike, expecting something humorous to come out of Holmes' mouth. Sherlock rolled his eyes. He wasn't their private jest monkey.

"Nothing, erm. . . hey," he smiled tightly at Jim, who grinned back in that same excited, dumb way, too dumb for a student like him.

For the whole class, Molly refused to indulge in playing happy couples with Jim, trying her best not to ask Sherlock what the hell he meant by all of that.

As the class ended, Molly and Jim separated, and she set off with Sherlock, not talking to him for the entire time. At the end of the day, she grabbed Sherlock roughly by his arm and led him to someplace where no one could hear them. She did not go over to the car park with him, as if still debating internally whether to allow Sherlock into her car or not.

"What was all that about?"

"What?" Sherlock tried to ask faux-innocently. If this was the only thing that could distract him from his thoughts about John, so be it. And only heaven help him.

"Don't pretend, Sherlock. Don't think I haven't noticed. You don't like Jim."

It was framed more like an accusation than a question, one that Sherlock did not deny, "Last time I checked, I thought I could have my own opinions about a person."

Molly smiled disbelievingly, "Well, then you're wrong. He's not gay! We're together!"

"You think?" Sherlock scoffed, "Look at him, working-class fellow with that level of personal grooming! You're blinded by love. That's what happens when you're in love. It blinds you!"

He bit his lip before continuing. Molly had heard him, and he knew by the look on her face that she knew. Not the whole story but she had an idea.

"Sherlock. . .?" she began confusedly, "What's—?"

But she could never speak further, not with sirens flooding through the gates. In an instant as Sherlock and Molly ducked away from the scene, professors were rushing about, and what seemed like an ambulance parked in front of the main entrance up the driveway. Sherlock's eyes darted to everywhere, and for the time, his mind was pleasantly distracted from John.

"What is it?" she whispered to him, as if he would know, "Is someone hurt?"

"Ms. Hooper! Mr. Holmes!" came a voice, the voice of Professor Abbott, "To the library, please!"

And before they could react, the teacher was shoving them in the direction of the staircase.

"What's happened?" Molly asked him urgently, "Professor, please."

She used that one voice which never failed to attract the attention of a man interested in playing the knight in shiny armour. Professor Abbott shook his head as he stopped at the first step of the staircase, looking up at them warily.

"Carl Powers. . . there's been an incident."


	17. Chapter 17

"Carl Powers... there's been an incident."

Molly's eyes narrowed, and Sherlock dismissed it at once. Not that he had anything _much_ against Carl Powers, but he was a little bully who always targeted Molly, and especially him. Well, it wasn't _his_ fault that his brain was superior to his, as he told Molly once when she explained that it was just jealousy and that he should pity him if anything. If Powers only knew how difficult it was to be in the possession of an unstable and all-observing mind like Sherlock's, if Powers only knew how difficult Sherlock's childhood and teenage had been as he had struggled with the jagged edges of his mind, forcing himself to sleep while trying not to listen or hear or see everything around him, he would've pitied him instead.

"I hope it's something bad," Sherlock rolled his eyes, the momentary distraction wafting away, "I hated him anyway."

"Sherlock!" She chastised, "You shouldn't say something like that! We can only hope that he is alright. After all, he's one of the best Mathletes in the country, he's a star student!"

Sherlock finished with a vague murmur of, "Council worker." Molly sighed in exasperation, and rushed after Professor Abbott, who was shooing the remainder of the students who were still there in the campus to the library. Sherlock looked away at once when he saw John join him. He couldn't believe what he was doing. He was hiding from John and he had no idea why. It was just that every fibre and nerve in his body screamed that he did not want John to see him and he did not want those empty eyes looking at him like Sherlock was the bane of his existence, empty eyes hovering over strict and thin lips curled into a sneer.

Lips that did nothing to resemble what they were when lust-reddened, helplessly pressed between Sherlock's own.

Nevertheless, as Molly approached the professors, Sherlock watched John's eyes narrow and then dart from side to side, almost as if looking for Sherlock around. He watched her talk to them for further information. He wanted to think that John was looking for him, that he wanted to see Sherlock too, just as Sherlock wanted to see him. He wanted to believe...

In the end, it only left him feeling empty and hollow. He simply waited at the corner for Molly, concentrating on the number of steps laid out in front of him and the places in which dirt had accumulated. Soon enough, Molly came rushing up, panting, "Come on Sherlock, let's go, they aren't telling me anything."

The library turned out to be full of students whose classes were still going on when this "incident" with Powers took place. Many seemed delighted at the prospect of getting to meet each other, and Sherlock simply shook his head at how unfortunate these people were, deriving happiness from seeing each other.

Like when he saw John, and Sherlock tried not to think about that.

He stood outside the library, letting Molly go in. He wasn't fond of crowds, if he could help it. He disliked the overwhelming inflow of data whenever he reached a populated room, and therefore he chose to stand outside. For him, data served the purpose of enlightening him instead of  overpowering him with its sheer abundance. And at any rate, he was banned from entering the library as well. He stood, waiting for her impatiently, tapping a vague rhythm on the door with his fingers and exchanging glares with the librarian.

After sometime, Molly came out to fetch him, "They're... saying something happened to Carl when they were having this test in Math—like a heart attack."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed and then he cackled sarcastically, "Ooh, _what_ a mystery! He was the size of a whale, and he had a heart condition! He obviously would have a heart attack! Served him right—Ow!"

Molly elbowed him right in the ribs, "Sherlock, you really shouldn't say something like that...."

"Eh..." Sherlock began doubtfully, because he really believed that Powers needed something like that to set him right on the track, but Molly cut right across him.

"No, Sherlock, NO!.... Anyway, they're not letting us out of here until the whole place's clear of sirens. You coming in?"

Sherlock peeped inside the already full room and the old librarian shouting on top of her voice to treat the books with care and gentle hands, "You think?"

Molly followed his gaze, and grimaced, "Probably not."

They stood outside, watching the rush of various... there were no medical personnel? Sherlock's eyes narrowed at that. St. Bart's had its own medical facilities, and even the most stupid of people knew how to administer a CPR, well if not properly, but still.

"You know," Molly spoke after sometime, "It really is odd... Carl, he was healthy enough. I mean yeah, he did have his meds for high BP and similar stuff... but he was very regular about them. Never missed a dose."

Sherlock looked at her, "How do _you_ know that?"

"You remember that one time he had cornered us near second floor stairwell... His watch went off and then he walked away, remember? I saw him taking some pills, might have been his meds. He actually had an alarm set on his watch for them right on time."

Sherlock had no recollection of this little incident whatsoever. He thought that he must have deleted it, and anyway, it was Molly's task to remember such insignificant things, not his.

Before Molly knew it, Sherlock had left her side and was running downstairs. As far as he remembered, Carl Powers might have been the size of a seal with more fatty content than water in his body, but if he suffered from the risk of a heart attack, he must have had some sort of medication, won't he? After all, he was a star student, as Molly put it.

"Sherlock!" Molly called after him, and before she knew it, she was following him frantically. Sherlock had this weird tendency to always leave her abandoned in a place and Molly had to make sure that he remained in her line of sight, lest he might do something stupid.

Sherlock climbed down the second flight of stairs and from the window he peeped outside. There was the coroner's van near the entrance. Carl Powers _died_? In the middle of a test, how unimaginative!

Somehow, he must have worded this aloud because as Molly came skidding to a halt beside him, she tutted disapprovingly, "Don't want anyone to hear you saying that aloud, Sherlock.... what's this?"

She spotted the vehicle too and gasped in horror, "What's the coroner doing here?"

Sherlock simply shrugged his shoulders, even though it was quite obvious what it meant if the coroner came around, "Let's find out."

Before she could properly refuse him, Sherlock had set off again with the vague murmur of "Mr. Smith's room". Molly took this as a request to follow after Sherlock and try to stop him, which she knew she won't be able to. Sherlock had a lifelong fascination with dead bodies, and even she did, she admitted that to herself, but he.... well, he was just Sherlock. His fascination approached something alike to cold-bloodedness.

They came to a halt near the men's lavatory and Sherlock and Molly crouched near it as they saw Dean Hope enter Mr. Smith's, their calculus professor, classroom. Molly kept whispering frantically in his ear, "Sherlock, please let's just go back to the library, we're not supposed to be here! Sherlock, please let this go, we really shouldn't be here!"

A surprised voice came from behind them, one that send shivers down his spine when he heard his name being called, "Sherlock? Molly?"

They turned around to see Jim's large brown eyes fixed mostly on Sherlock, assessing him. There was a flicker of malice in those sinful eyes before they turned surprised again, "Jim!" She hugged him and placed a soft kiss on his cheek, having forgotten about all that 'gay' drama from before, "Jim did you hear about Carl P—?"

"Yeah, I did," his Irish lilt seemed less obvious today, "God knows why we're still here. We're adults, not kids who start crying if someone died, right _Sherlock_?"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed momentarily as he tried to understand why that particular remark was thrown in his direction. He clenched his teeth together. His name sounded like a taunt every time Jim used it. Before he could ask him what exactly he meant by that and more importantly _what_ exactly he was doing there, Molly interrupted, "Jim, you really shouldn't say something like that!"

"But Powers did die," said he, and Sherlock found himself looking at him distrustfully. But Molly spoke before he could say anything, "See there," Molly pointed at the teacher assembled outside the lecture hall and turned her attention back to Jim, "You really shouldn't have said that Carl died. Now he really died."

Sherlock huffed in annoyance and turned to Molly, "Stop saying 'died'. At any rate, you should be happy. You'll get to see a real dead body."

Jim chuckled darkly, which made Sherlock's head snap back towards him warily, "What are you doing here anyway?" he said, stopping short at Jim.

"I could ask you the same question," said Jim with a sneer, "Enjoying the show, are you?"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed as he assessed him, this hand, his fingers, and finally the state of his clothes. He was alright, but when he looked up at Jim, there was that same malicious lingering smirk masked by a facade of innocence and devotion to his best friend. Ignoring him, he turned to Molly who had been trying to see what had happened till the time he and Jim were exchanging scrutinising glares, glare that seemed to touch Sherlock everywhere as it travelled up and down his figure and made him recoil.

"Give me your reading glasses."

She scowled as her mind tried to keep up with him, " _What_? Sherlock, we're.... you're not thinking of going there, are you?"

"Reading glasses," he extended his palm to her, "Now."

Even as she complained and kept on telling him that he really should listen to her, and even as she called him a hundred thousand renditions of 'lunatic', she eventually did hand over her reading glasses. Sherlock did not notice Jim's face light up with fascination as he slicked his hair down, put Molly's specs on and stood up, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. She tried to tug at his jumper but he dodged away, forcing himself not to look at Jim, "Coming?"

"No! Sherlock, I know it's hard for you, but please don't be an idiot—"

He simply rolled his eyes, "You're boring," and before he could add that "John was more interesting" he stopped himself and sauntered past them, slouching his shoulders. Something felt odd, and he never could pass up the opportunity to check out a dead body, couldn't he?

 Most of the professors were outside, discussing the incident in hushed tones. Sherlock smoothly slipped inside the lecture room where Powers was laid down on the ground and Mr. Smith, the ruddy-faced Mathematics coach looked like he had just finished with the CPR, although he must have been declared dead a time ago. Sherlock cast his eyes around the room, at Powers, his eyes resting on his bookbag and his desk. Sherlock's eyes squinted closer, his meagre disguise allowing him to stand unnoticed. This was odd, very odd.

"When are we going to send the students back?" came John's voice out of nowhere, and Sherlock went rigid right there, blood standing still in him. His eyes rested on his blond head and he ducked away, forcing himself to look at Powers' dead body while John's mellow voice still danced along the edges of his ear. He sucked in a breath down his dry, impossibly dry throat as adrenaline built inside him dangerously, filling him to the brim. He wanted to run, run away and he didn't know why. It wasn't like he needed to hide from him, because he wasn't the one who was wrong.

"I don't know," whispered one of the professors back at John, "I can't stay here. I need to go."

As the professor moved away, Sherlock moved away too, just to be out of John's line of sight, but too late. John had already spotted him. The frown lines eased away for a moment, and Sherlock could see that his breathing had picked up. It reminded him of the other times that that had happened, and he forced himself to look away, but he couldn't. He simply stared at John for a few more seconds. He hated this silence. He hated the way he wanted to bask in John's attention for however long he could. Sherlock wanted to enjoy it, to savour it, this momentary reprieve from the game of not acknowledging each other. John wasn't approaching him, but he did send another professor his way, to his annoyance.

"Mr. Holmes, what are you doing here?"

The attention of the entire room was caught and all heads turned towards him, all except Powers and John's. To his relief, the coroner arrived and he ceased to be the centre of attention for all except the teacher who had confronted him.

"His parents?" The coroner asked.

"They're coming over from Brighton. They've been informed," Dean Hope supplied helpfully. Sherlock couldn't take it anymore. They were treating this as a regular death, whereas it clearly wasn't.

"Bit weird, isn't it?" He called out, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see John's eyes all attention on him, like he was some lecturer instead of the student who he had made love to a few weeks ago. He wished to know how John could manage it so easily, all the ignoring and pretending that nothing had passed between them.

The coroner turned to him with narrowing eyes and then looked around at the other professors for an explanation, "Beg your pardon?"

Sherlock sucked in a breath and continued, relying on the snippets of information Molly had provided him with, "He was on his meds regularly and yet he died of sudden cardiac arrest. Isn't that odd?"

This time, the Dean simply grabbed Sherlock's arm and dragged him outside angrily, "Mr. Holmes, this is not a time—"

"Oh, please!" Sherlock protested, "Check his watch. There's no way he could've died of a sudden cardiac death. His watch has an alarm telling him to take his meds right on time," he extracted his arm from there and marched into the classroom dramatically and showed them the pills stuffed in his bookbag.

"Mr. Holmes," came the voice of one of the other teachers, "Stop the fuss—"

"There's something clearly fishy about it!" Sherlock protested as he saw Powers' body being led away on a stretcher; it was clear as day, why could they not see it, "He was writing his test, wasn't he?" He picked up the papers and showed them the half-full page in Powers' handwriting, "Where is the pen with which—?"

"It's right here," said the coroner, but Sherlock cut across him.

"No, that's black ink. I'm talking about the pen with the blue ink, the one with which he has written the minority of his text in. Where is the pen?! This isn't some accident that you can forget about, this is foul play!"

He stared at all of them expectantly, hoping that he had got his point across. Out of the corner of his eye, Molly and Jim had arrived too, and were hidden at the back of the group, keen not to be seen by the professors. Where was her moral support when he needed it? But no one seemed to think the disappearance of the blue ink pen was important. It was weird enough, alright, but it did not seem to have any bearing with Powers' sudden lapse into cardiac arrest.

He wanted to turn to Jim, and to elicit at least his support that Powers' death was mysterious indeed. He was intelligent, he must be able to see through it, won't he? But something about the way he had been staring at Powers' dead body with his large dark eyes told him that he would be better off without Jim's cooperation. Suddenly Jim looked up and through his eyes, he seemed to express a twisted brand of manic contentment, abruptly followed by cold blankness. Sherlock knew that he was putting up this sentiment in his eyes, because deep down inside, if he was really dating his best friend whilst he was so clearly gay and so shameless in his twisted attraction towards Sherlock, he must be a heartless, emotionless man.

Sherlock dared not to admit that, but it did intrigue him. A lot. He didn't know what to make of it.

Finally, Dean Hope simply waved the coroner away and turned to Sherlock, "Mr. Holmes, I think it would be wise if you—"

"It's obvious, Mr. Hope! Why would it go missing of all things?!"

This time, he looked at John for some sort of support. John said that he was brilliant, he said it so many times. He could influence the other professors into thinking that Sherlock was right, that there was something wrong. But John simply looked away, his palms hidden behind his back. Sherlock groaned in frustration. How could he have even expected a professor like John to help him, the one who was so obsessed with keeping his own job, a job he wasn't fond of?

But no, he couldn't, he didn't want to have John supporting him in front of Jim. For some crazy reason that he could make no sense of, he wished John to stay shut and at least look like he didn't matter to him in front of Jim.

"Perhaps," to Sherlock's dismay, John began, "It is a bit odd—Powers _was_ very careful about his medication, wasn't he, Abbott?"

Professor Abbott nodded too, but thankfully, no more development followed after that. Sherlock bit the inside of his cheek in annoyance and backed off, making his mind up inwardly to get to the root of it. If they needed proof that he was right, he would give them, even if proving was just a detail. Because he was right, and after Sherlock had been proved so spectacularly wrong about John, he needed a chance to prove to the world, to _himself_ , that he was always right. That he was infallible to sentiment and everything else that was put up against him.

"Doctor Watson, please lead Mr. Holmes to the library, and make sure that he stays _there_ ," the Dean snarled as Powers' body was taken away. Sherlock stole one look at John, and instantly sauntered out of there. He could not manage to be even within a metre of him without his brain going into Fight or Flight. Molly and Jim had already walked out of there and were waiting for Sherlock in their previous hiding spot. Sherlock tried not to look back at John, or in front at Jim. If it wasn't for the distraction that the incident had offered, Sherlock would have done something even he did not have the measure of.

As he had expected, John hadn't followed him. He cast the distracting thoughts aside and fixed himself on the matter.

Why would someone hide the pen? Or had it just got lost?

Jim's distracting presence beside him wasn't helping at all.

* * *

This was utter hell.

Sherlock remained seated at the far end of the pub, with Molly somewhere with her snobbish, wannabe girl friends, getting plastered for the night. He didn't understand. There was no point in consuming the obnoxious disaster that was alcohol. He was frankly happy staying all by himself in Mrs. Hudson's and Mrs. Turner's tiresome chatty company in 221A and playing them little pieces that he had been composing while thinking up the Powers' mystery. For some reason, he seemed convinced that there was an external factor involved in this. It would've taken Powers to go off his meds for his heart to have failed so spectacularly...

And now he was here in a place reeking with booze and sweat and _people_ in general. He wasn't bored, but he wasn't over-the-moon either. His fingers were longing to press the call button and ring Mycroft up, but he hadn't done that because he couldn't take the risk of his fingers instead calling John on their own accord.

The night could only get worse from there on. The low, ceaseless thump of the music was audible even as he went outside for some air and (some smoking exercise), making his whole frame pulse uncomfortably. He didn't understand how people could _stand_ it. Even if it was icy outside and even if the night air bit into his skin like a blade, it was so much better. He buried his hands in his pockets, only to remove them to light his second cigarette. He could remember the time when he had been hanging out with John at the bus stop near the uni, and then walking under the rain, feeling John's eyes graze his body....

It had been three weeks since he had spoken to John at all, since he had walked out of his classroom after he had realised that John's attraction towards him was purely carnal and that after he had his fill, he had lost all his interest in Sherlock, well... going by the way he was successful in pointedly ignoring Sherlock's existence at all.

It was all contradicting. He had no idea why John was doing this. He could see how John always changed around him, and logically it had always seemed to be a little more than simple sexual interest, in fact a _lot_ more. For the first week Sherlock had been too angry and upset that he had let sentiment, silly stupid sentiment which had led him here in the first place, muck his thoughts up.

But he missed John terribly, and he pretended that he didn't, and that it was simply a stupid phase that had to go away anyway, and even after he had tried to gatecrash in his parents' house when he decided that he couldn't live in 221B with John haunting him for every second he stayed there. Mycroft knew what had transpired, and he had simply shaken his head in dismay, making Sherlock feel worse, like a failure.

But John had wanted him. He remembered all those little moments. It didn't make any sense.

Those little moments. Sherlock now thought that he knew, _understood_ John's abnormal attraction towards him. John loved risk, something he had always been denied by living the life of a professor. It was an act of rebellion, being a professor and still hanging out and flirting with his student, having sex with a man when he clearly was as straight as a cane. Just a distraction from his boring life and his boring girlfriend and his alcoholic sister and perhaps the rest of his alcoholic family as well. The attraction he felt towards Sherlock was really just the lure of novelty and of danger, he reasoned.

John's voice came back to his memory. Sherlock had crossed the line of 'okay' and unknowingly wandered into the territory of 'too much', and he knew that. John had _said_ that he regretted it. All was said and done.

"Sherlock..." Molly approached him, looking surprisingly sober. Sherlock trampled the cigarette under his feet at once as she came closer and tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, "Why're you out in the cold? Come inside."

He simply hummed in response, and stood there steadfastly, wishing that she left him be so that he could have another fill on the fag. Like that was going to happen. Fate knew that he was Sherlock Holmes, and it could never be so kind to him.

"Sherlock, seriously..."

"Break it off with Jim," Sherlock spoke in a low voice, knowing how lame and moreover imposing he sounded, "and save yourself the pain. I know you like him, but... he—he likes men. He's gay, Molly."

Molly sucked in a sharp breath. Sherlock had expected her to storm off with a curse or something and leave him alone, but instead she wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck and took his right arm, "Let's walk."

He looked at her weirdly, at which she only smiled and said, "We've done this before, remember?"

He looked around skeptically, "Molly, you—"

"Yes, I know that we might catch flu, now walk!" she commanded in her most imperious voice. Sherlock acquiesced, and they started towards any direction aimlessly. They used to do this long time ago, long walks around London, places only Sherlock knew and had seen. They went back and forth the streets and Sherlock committed to his memory the various changes that had taken place in the city.

"So... let's talk about the elephant in the room, shall we?" She began, but Sherlock cut her off.

"If you brought me out to talk about Dr. Watson, you're mistaken."

She frowned, "I thought you guys were on first-names basis."

"I thought you and Greg were in a relationship, and not you and Jim!" He countered back bitterly and looked away, biting his lip. Something that he had buried deep in his heart was now coming out, but he had not yet cried over it. He knew it was unhealthy not to cry it out, and yet he had simply pushed it down and down with cigarette smoke and violin and elementary experiments like testing for acid using litmus paper. But now that Molly was trying to take it out and force him to revisit the memory of how John had taken his virginity and then resolved to forget about it next day, it was ten times worse. He didn't even know why he was crying over such an absurd and human concept as virginity. He didn't even know why he was crying at all. He just wished for the temperature to drop below zero, so that even if treacherous tears came to his eyes, they would freeze right then and there.

His logical mind came up with the information that the freezing point of tears, not being pure hydrogen hydroxide, was a little lower than zero degree centigrade.

Molly buried herself deeper in his side, and unconsciously, Sherlock leaned in for the human comfort. He didn't need comfort, but having Molly beside him instead of John... he wasn't going to _think_ about John.

"You should never keep sadness buried deep inside you, Sherlock," she advised, and for a moment, Sherlock thought that even she was crying. But she wasn't, and he thanked God for that. She was stronger, better than this, "You should cry the hurt out. Always."

"Did it hurt?" Sherlock croaked, wondering whether he was the only person who cried over a non-existent relationship, or did everyone cry over breakups.

"Very. It wasn't even his fault," she whispered, looking away, not wanting Sherlock to see her very red nose.

A cab or two passed them, but Sherlock took no conscious notice of that as they passed a general store and a homeless man perched outside it. Sherlock looked away. Why was everything in the world reminding him of John? Why couldn't they remind him of.... Mycroft instead?

"Did he.... did you guys fight?" She asked him, as they stood there, bathing in the lights of the store and looking at the street. They began walking silently again. It was odd, walking in London. If you were alone, everyone took note of you, never really let you be alone because you stuck out like a sore thumb, like a white between the countless blacks, whereas if you had a partner to walk with you, you were solitary in midst of the city, public yet anonymous.

He only wished for it to be as simple as a fight.

"No," he said simply, making it sound like homework, "He came to my house, to tell me to back off. I kissed him, one thing led to another and the next day, he asked me to forget about it."

He _was_ about to say that, out of pure bitterness, when the first word died in his mouth. Molly turned to him, "You know, you can tell me anything. I'm your—I'm your..."

Sherlock waited patiently for her to complete, but she never did. She just looked at him like she couldn't believe him after all that they went through together.

"You're my what?" Sherlock asked her, and for a moment, she felt compelled to ask him whether he even returned what she felt for the boy she had helped through in his junkie days, "Sherlock, am I your—your... best friend?"

Sherlock frowned at her, letting go of her arm, "Why are you with me?"

"Christ, Sherlock," she shook her head, feeling gut-punched at being rejected by her best friend. How could she explain it to him, something that she was sure that he won't understand, "don't change the topic—"

"I mean it," Sherlock deadpanned, but his tone gradually growing brittle and unsettlingly clinical, "Why are you with me at all? Because, you see, there are certain expected patterns of behaviour often observed in the children of alcoholics—"

" _Christ,_ Sherlock take a break—"

"—and I know I am not exactly _normal_ ," Sherlock continued, riding over her, his voice becoming even more cold and distant, "I was an addict, and I'm a sociopath, and I know I used to have sudden mood swings and periods of depression, which clearly, _clearly_ brought out the caretaker impulse in you, and…" He stumbled over his words for the first time, pulling viciously at his scarf in compensation, "I know I am _broken_ , there’s no point pretending otherwise. I don’t work right, and possibly you just wish to fix me like your family."

"Sherlock, seriously stop labelling yourself as a machine—"

"Is that—am I—am I a _project_ , to you? An experiment in guise of the label of _best friend_?!"

Molly stopped halfway, when she realised that those words weren't addressed to her. Not really. Because none of _her_ parents weren't alcoholics. Her uncle was.

But she just stood there, watching Sherlock unload all his repressed feelings on her. It was vaguely disconcerting. She was just used to the unfeeling Sherlock so, _so_ much that now that Sherlock was angry, really, _really_ angry, it was like watching a demonstration of how all the valid laws of physics could fail in the wake of a fundamental law of nature.

When he finally finished, she heaved a breath and stepped another step away from him, giving him some space for himself, and looked into his pale face. Knowing that this was enough talk for Sherlock at the moment, she changed the subject, "Why do you hate Jim?"

That seemed to catch him unawares, "Sorry what?"

"You... seem to, you know, you don't like him. Is it because...?"

To her surprise, Sherlock rolled his eyes rather dramatically, "If you remember, I like...d a man too," in fact love him, but Sherlock did not want to say that to her.

"No, not that," Molly shook her head, ignoring the tentative past tense, "just even on the award function evening, you seemed to want to maintain a distance from him..."

"I never said I didn't like him," Sherlock spoke brusquely, implying the most untrue meaning he had ever... implied. But Molly simply gave up instead going with, "Look, you're my best friend, and you _don't_ have to say it back, I completely understand if you don't want to, and if there's anything you need—"

But Sherlock was simply staring at her blankly, "Why—why would I need anything _from_ you?"

She shrugged, "No reason at all... just... save it for a rainy day, I guess?"

Silence fell. A car passed by, blaring its horn noisily, and Sherlock saw how different it was from Molly's signature blaring of her second-hand car's horn. Molly’s blood was pounding in her ears, rushing like a waterfall, and Sherlock looked at her as if he’d been struck, and the world just spun dizzily around them, threatening to tip them over the edge.

"That would be eight more months, Molly," Sherlock said, causing them to burst into aimless laughter. He had forgotten how it used to be, without John, without coming up for ways and flimsy excuses to talk to him, without thinking about him and how being near him felt like. He had forgotten that there was another person in his life.

They sobered up a little, and Sherlock lent her his arm, which she took and patted slowly, "I put up with you, you big, impossible man-child. I deserve some recognition."

Sherlock smiled a little, endearing half-smile, "You—you want this? You want to be _my_ friend?"

Molly looked at him, willing desperately for him to see how much she meant it. “With all my heart, Sherlock. Or all my brain.... if that's more trustworthy to you."

Sherlock blinked slowly, as if stunned, even as they walked on. "You mean to say—if you were given a choice—if you had the chance to let this all just be—a, a phase, or a mistake, or some temporary aberration—you wouldn’t take it?"

Molly stared at him in disbelief. How could Sherlock be so confused about her when he used to be so sure about his stupid professor?

"You wouldn’t just... walk away?" Sherlock asked, barely audible.

It struck her that he needed assurance from her after everything. It wounded her a little when she saw how little he trusted her.

"You think I would? After... school, after everything, Sherlock?"

He straightened up, realising that he had her complete and unwavering loyalty, "I think not."

She smiled, a tight little smile, "Good, now that we've settled that, you'll buy me anything I ask you to. You have your brother's credit card, don't you?"

Sherlock snorted at that. They circled around a tree and she pointed at a novelty store, smiling wryly, "Anything, alright? Even if it is fake spiders or cockroaches."

"Why bother about the fake ones when I can get you real ones—"He began, but she screwed her face up in disgust, "Ew, Sherlock! Stop it!"

"Funny, you know, you want to be a pathologist, perform autopsies and you don't like cockroaches..."

"No one _likes_ cockroaches, Sherlock," said she, rolling her eyes at him and entering the store with Sherlock behind her. She rang the bell, "Even you won't like them if I slipped them into your food."

"Just the thought I needed to encourage me to have some food."

"Touché," she smirked, and Sherlock cast his eyes around the store, and then at the items stashed inside the transparent glass boxes and shelves. Fake guns that were actually lighters, lighters that shot water when pressed. Sherlock had been almost fooled by Molly by that once, thanking his brain which reasoned why Molly would gift him a cigarette lighter when she was so much against smoking. There were hula hoops and Frisbees, and other novelty gifts that she always had a particular penchant to. Without Molly's attention, he picked up a click pen as the owner continued to amuse her. A mischievous idea infected his mind, and he poked Molly on the arm to show her that. Without really paying attention to him, she took it in her fingers and pushed the retractable cylinder inwards, which turned out to a shock for her, quite literally.

Sherlock doubled up from laughing, forgetting that he was an adult. She deserved it, she completely did. Because if she indeed was his best friend, she had to put up with this in turn as well. Then, to his and the shopkeeper's horror, her face blanched and she clutched her chest, while the pen still remained in her grip.

"Molly?!" Sherlock called out in confusion as her fingers, as she started trembling, almost shaking. And then, before she could stop, Sherlock rolled his eyes and spoke, his bland voice still betraying that one second of panic he had felt, "Seriously, stop it. You're fooling no one."

She started giggling and handed the pen back to Sherlock, "You think, I, a collector of novelties, will be fooled by such a petty little thing? Sherlock, I'm disappointed.... God, your face, I think I'm having a real heart attack now!"

Sherlock froze at her words, "Say that again."

The shopkeeper did look like he was going to have a mini heart attack, but nobody paid attention to it. Molly's smiles and laughter faded into oblivion, "Sherlock, what—?"

He simply shook his head, "Say that again."

"I—I... erm, I'm a collector of—"

"No, not that," Sherlock shook his head, "Repeat your words from one minute ago, _exactly_ as you said them."

"I'm... disappointed... I'm having a heart..." and then she looked down at the pen in Sherlock's palm, "Sherlock, this is crazy."

But his face simply lit up with excitement, "I think not."


	18. Chapter 18

"Don't run away so fast, Sherlock. It's unbecoming of you."

Sherlock's skin crawled at the sound of the melodic voice. He tried to quicken his pace but the heavy books in his arm were starting to spill and he came to a stop there. It had been a few days since he had thought that he had found out the clue to the mystery of Powers' death, and he had been convincing his impossible family to request for an autopsy, even offered to finance for it, but they were adamant for a proper burial. Sherlock tried to tell them that there was something off with their son's death, to which they had only replied that it didn't matter to them anymore because it wasn't going to bring their dead son back.

Sherlock wonder what the hell that was supposed to mean. Fine, Powers was dead and he wasn't coming back, but that didn't mean that they should let the perpetrator get away, did it?

Nevertheless, Powers' parents had agreed to an autopsy the next Sunday afternoon and they had denied Sherlock's attempt to finance it, thankfully because of Molly's persuasive words.

"What?" Sherlock didn't try and spin around to face Jim, "What are you doing here?"

He came to a halt right in front of the lab, only yard away from the room in which John must be in. He heard Jim come to a halt behind him. He smelled like a medicine cabinet and his own strange brand of the alluring deodorant which he wore. Had Sherlock not known who had been approaching him from behind, he would've thought that it was someone who had jumped right out of a TV commercial.

"I feel so rejected, Sherlock," said he breathlessly, the mirth never leaving his voice. "Why won't you be my friend?"

Sherlock turned on him. He found himself closer to him than he had anticipated. Jim seemed to have been standing little more than an inch behind him. His dark eyes flashed with amusement as Sherlock took a clumsy step back and a book slipped out of his arms and fell to the floor with a dull thud. He didn't dare bend down and pick it up.

"I try so much, Sherlock," he shook his head mock-dejectedly, "I give you what you like. Give you things to play around with, little puzzles instead of chocolates and roses. . . but I'm now starting to be worried that everything I'd heard about you was hype." 

"Hype? What are you talking about?" Sherlock snapped, and then it struck him.

"Did you do it?"

Jim's smirk widened. Sherlock tried to suppress a shiver. Jim took a step towards him, the light fell over his face and Sherlock could see his eyes. Empty, dark, nothing like Sherlock had ever seen. Inviting.

"Did I do _what_ , precisely?" He asked, batting his dark eyelashes and taking another step towards Sherlock. He could feel his warm breath on his lips, could smell it, taste it, but he didn't back away. He looked down at Jim with his resolutely cold, stony-hard expression. Sherlock couldn't move backwards without looking like he was afraid of him or forwards without creating undesirable proximity between Moriarty and himself.

"You know what," Sherlock snapped.

Jim smirked. There was glee in every feature. It lit his face up with a sickening glow. "Oh, please! Don't you tell me that you pity that bulk of fat and muscle?" he said with a shrill laugh. Sherlock fought tooth-and-nail not to blink, to maintain that stone-cold facade, but it was getting difficult, with that manic laugh up so close to him, with that brand of toothpaste and minty chewing gum.

"You killed him," he said flatly. It was not an accusation, merely a hollow statement. Jim tutted.

"Oh, it's touching. How you care," he sneered. "Shame you're that type. Except. . ." his gaze swept over Sherlock's body, as if touching every part of him, "you're really not, are you? All that anger, all that frustration. So beautiful."

"You killed a person," Sherlock spat.

Jim rolled his eyes and Sherlock found that he wasn't as shocked as he thought he'd be, "Are you going to repeat it till it becomes some nursery rhyme?  _Jimmy killed a person, Jimmy killed a person_ ," he sang and Sherlock didn't dare take a step back, " _and Sherly finds it amusing!_ "

"Well, your sense of humour is certainly refreshing," Sherlock said darkly.

Jim looked positively gleeful, "Oh it is, isn't it, Sherlock? Shame you're the only one who seems to appreciate it. Go on, care for me, pity like you're pitying Powers."

Sherlock scowled at him, "Why did you kill him?"

Jim rolled his eyes rather dramatically and yawned, "Now you're being boring. Why do you want to play with a toy? Because you want to. Simple."

Sherlock's scowl became darker when he heard Jim comparing killing a person to playing with a toy, "You wouldn't feel the same if someone wanted to kill you?"

Jim spluttered in a howl of manic laughter, "Really, Sherlock? And here I thought you were going to be a _disappointment._ You know, how I love being proved wrong, Sherlock," he came dangerously close to Sherlock, "You want to kill me, don't you? Tear each tissue apart from my bone with your tongue till all that anger went away. . ."

"Fuck you," he growled. Anger wasn't exactly the most predominant emotion in him, but this time, with Moriarty's vile, overwhelming presence a scantful of inches away from him, and the way in which he was laughing even after having killed a person for absolutely no reason at all, anger and frustration poured out through his veins.

But Jim only smirked, "My pleasure." Sherlock was losing, he felt like he was losing a game he wasn't willing to play but he couldn't resist, "I was stalking you, after all," he said with a sick grin on his face, the one that made Sherlock's skin crawl into itself, " _I'm a stalker_. Does that make you angry, Sherlock? Does it want you to hurt me? Punch me till your knuckles bled?"

Sherlock had no idea what he was supposed to say to that. He had not a clue about what to say to a man who confessed to being a stalker. He inwardly cringed. Moriarty's presence itself was unsettling; it was hard to discern when or where or how this twisted fascination began. All Sherlock could tell was that his interest was piqued during that goddamned award function.

"Congratulations," Sherlock managed without a trace of emotion in his voice. "It would have been less obvious if you put it out on the notice board."

Jim laughed again. The very sound was creepy. Sherlock instantly pictured a spider twitching on its hind legs and making that sound, "Oh, Sherlock, my dear. My sense of humour might, as you put it, _refreshing._ But yours, oh Lord, is  _astounding,_ to say the least!"

"Is it?" Sherlock said tetchily. "I've been informed that I am quite _humour dry."_

"Oh, no, no!" His eyes widened; his pupils dilated. "Pray tell me who but the best comedian would think that Powers died because he was _electrocuted!_ " He began laughing out loud, clutching his stomach, doubling up with humour that Sherlock didn't find funny, not in the slightest. Carl might have been a bully, but he was an innocent person. His family had dreams for him, and Sherlock had seen how his mother had cried when he had tried to convince them for autopsy.

But how did Jim know that he thought Powers was electrocuted? There was only one person he had shared his doubts with. Surely not, did Molly _tell_ him that? Did she? How could she, after he had tried to convince her?

"Is this a confession then?" Sherlock tried the other way, instead of admitting that he was trying to find what exactly killed Powers. Jim looked at him, his eyes running eagerly over every line of his face. He gave a burst of almost manic, stunted laughter.

"Oh, _good_! Very good, Sherlock. You can talk. You _want_ to know how I did it, don't you? You want to get to the root of it, immerse yourself till you found no way out," he said breathlessly, "Thats what you want, isn't it?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him and then pushed past him, desperate to get out of there, leaving the fallen book on the floor itself.

"You really don't think I would be _so_ obvious, hmm Sherlock?" He called out loud, and Sherlock could hear the scraping of a heavy door against the floor in an instant, "I'm disappointed in you, ordinary stupid Sherlock, I'm disappointed! How low you think of me! I feel so sad."

He wanted to keep walking away like it didn't matter to him. He wanted to reach for his phone and begin recording it, the confessions Jim Moriarty made in front of him, and rid him from Molly's life, but the tiniest bit in Jim's voice, that suggested that Jim knew Sherlock's greatest weakness and now he was trying to manipulate him made him turn and storm back towards Jim.

Sherlock had to admit that it was working.

"You're pathetic," Sherlock said, and he could see in Jim's eyes that he was selling himself short. Jim was only a tortured genius, not unlike himself, even though he better part of his mind warned him of the murder.

"So pathetic that you'd destroy everyone," Jim said softly, nothing, absolutely nothing betraying the usual tone of voice he used as he snapped his fingers, "Just like that, you'd do that, won't you? Thrilling, wouldn't that be?

Sherlock stared down at Jim with intense loathing in his voice, the sort he had never thought he would feel, the sort he had thought himself to be above it all. But he did not utter a single sound. Pleased with the lack of response from Sherlock, which Jim knew as total attention, he went on.

"You and I are above that... above all these silly, ordinary people. They're _meant_ to bear the weight of a few who rise to greatness. Like you and I."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed momentarily. "You think?" he asked wryly.

Jim smirked, "Have you heard of binary stars, Sherlock?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and scoffed, "I don't concern myself with unnecessary things like astronomy and stars."

He tried not to flinch as Jim's hands approached him like he owned him. His eyes darted everywhere to find a security camera. There wasn't any. He couldn't help but congratulate Jim inwardly upon successfully cornering him in such an area. Jim's hands went to his neck and his fingers, his delicate, quivering fingers that looked like frozen to death to Sherlock adjusted his collar which lay askew on the V-neck of his jumper. Sherlock sucked in a breath and kept it there preciously, not wanting to exhale, and yet not wanting to give Moriarty the satisfaction that he could make Sherlock hold his breath. His entire body remained stiff and taut as Jim fixed his collar and brushed his hands, soft and unbelievably warm fingers under his shivering pulse.

"Learn to. You'll find binary stars interesting. Very."

He ran his hands down his chest, biting his lip down. Every attempt to blow Moriarty off caused him only to come closer.

"Two gas giants, they're co-dependent, Sherlock. So close that nothing else matters to them but their common centre of mass, around which they revolve." Jim looked up at him, his lips, "sounds familiar, doesn't it? You and I. You want to be distracted. You're sick of how stupid people are, so sick you would rather they died."

"I'm not sick of people," Sherlock declared weakly, his breath hitching as Jim caressed his navel with the slightest of touches.

"Would you like me to do _that_ for you? I could _burn_ this whole world down, Sherlock, for you," he tiptoed and breathed near his neck, "and deep down inside, you know it already, don't you? You and I, we're so alike, so _misunderstood_. We'll destroy the world till none remained but the two of us. You want to play with me. You want to _be_ with me. Scream in pleasure as I—"

Sherlock splayed his hands flat on Jim's chest and shoved him away sharply before Jim could give him the rest of it, "None of your mindfucking games work on me."

For the tiniest second, Sherlock thought that he had heard the ghost of a surprised yelp leave Jim's mouth before he let out another shrill laugh, "Oh, but we both know that's not tru-ue! . . . You want me to mindfuck you over and over again till you can hardly bear it, otherwise you still wouldn't be standing here, would you?"

Sherlock suppressed a shiver that ran through him at that, feeling intimidated at that, his palms clammy as another book struggled to break free from his grip. Nevertheless, he blew his chest up and towered over Jim, although the way Jim looked at him made him feel like they were at the same height.

Without another word, he made a poor attempt to go away to some calm place, but not when Jim cried out, "I'll destroy everyone you love, Sherlock. Starting with your beloved Molly. I _will_ do it, Sherlock, just like I did Carl. Until you beg me to stop, until you beg for mercy. _Twice_."

"I've never begged for mercy in my entire life—"

"Twice, Sherlock," Brown eyes full of glee met cold sea-green ones, "But don't you want a clue? How I did it, since you can't figure it out? One of my personal favourites, Powers, by the way—"

"No," Sherlock said through gritted teeth. He wanted to start walking back towards the steps leading to the second floor but he found that he was inexplicably rooted to his spot. Nevertheless, he dragged his protesting feet away from the repulsive, strange and yet alluring field that Jim created around himself.

"You do!" Jim called in a sing-song voice from behind him. "I know you do! Because you're just as inhuman as me, Sherlock!" Sherlock clenched his teeth together. His name sounded like a taunt every time Jim used it.

"Tell me then," He spat, turning to him. "Tell me how you killed an innocent boy for no reason at all!"

Jim burst into very ungainly giggles, "Oh my goodness! Look at the oh-so-moral man! I thought Molly was the only dimwit you cared about, although in her defence, you can give her some credit even if she's blind as an owl—"

"What do you want?" Sherlock growled.

"They tell me you're brilliant," Jim breathed, his demeanour rapidly and unpredictably changing again. "Prove it. Come play with me. I'll even give you an idea since you're so daft," he came closer, and Sherlock couldn't help but back away as the distance between them reduced exponentially fast, _"Make the world move against me._ Can you do that, Sherlock?"

"I could tell them what you did," Sherlock said, almost transfixed by the look that had come into Jim's eyes so suddenly and sharply.

Jim took a step towards him, the smirk carefully tucked back in the corners of his mouth. "You'll see one day, dearie. You think you're best friends with her, and you think your marks and you wandering around like some sort of peace judge by helping Powers will make you look like a hero. One day, when they turn against you, when the _mob mentality_ rises in them, you'll see, Sherlock. Mark my words.

"The ones that you thought were your friends will turn against you. They'll betray you, Sherlock. They always will. You think you're human, you're not. They'll see how you've always treated them, and they'll leave you for being _cold and uncaring_. Whew," he giggled a psychotic giggle, "so touching!"

"Speak for yourself," Sherlock seethed, thinking of Molly.

"You hate this world," Jim said softly. Sherlock could sense him moving closer to him, seeping into his personal space and dampening the air around them with poison but he didn't move. "You're throttled by it, stripped of your freedom. You would destroy it if you got the chance, wouldn't you?"

"That's the difference between you and me," Sherlock said quietly. "I don't set out to destroy something just because I don't like it."

Jim gave a low laugh and reached towards him. Sherlock felt like his throat constrict when he felt Jim's fingers encircle his wrist, his eyes never leaving his face. His fingers grazed his pulse point, and Sherlock's fluttered accordingly, as if Jim controlled it. "Oh, but I do that. I could destroy your whole world, Sherlock."

Sherlock's heart leapt up in his throat at the reminder of two names: John and Molly. He willed himself not to flinch at that, to not let his breath pick up at that. But Jim had seen, had understood.

"Oh, oh, oh! Don't tell me!" he exclaimed, looking back at Sherlock with an almost wild expression. "I know a man in love when I see one."

"Interesting," Sherlock sneered, "why is that?"

"Oh!" Jim stamped his foot on the floor, expression livid and eyes wide, "I'm right, aren't I? This just keeps getting better and _better,_ doesn't it?! So, he's in university, is he?"

Sherlock's insides twisted painfully at the thought of John, at the thought of what Moriarty could do to him if he found out about his other pressure point. Instead, he tried to steady himself at the momentary distraction as his lips trembled at the thought. He didn't reply, hoping that he didn't give himself away to Jim's careful eyes, his ever observing blank void stare.

Jim seemed to snap back to life. He gave a delighted laugh. "Let's not be so _obvious_ , Sherlock. You of all people should know that."

His throat felt dry as Jim hungrily eyed a single rivulet of sweat running down his right temple. He only gave him a derisive wink, "I'll find out who it is sooner or later, Sherlock. I can promise you that much."

Sherlock finally exhaled the breath he had been holding in his crumpled lungs.

"Oh, and by the way, good luck for your autopsy."

And with that, he was out, out of his eyes, as Sherlock swallowed bile down his throat and shoved his books into his bag.

Why would Jim do that? Why would he kill Powers?

And why Powers? Why not some much more stupid person? After all, Jim had said that some people deserved to be placed above others. Powers was much above the intellect of others.

But why would _anyone_ do that? No sane person would kill another man just because he needed to prove himself, would he?

But Jim wasn't sane, was he? He was psychotic. Sherlock didn't know what dim part of Molly's brain couldn't see it.

And if he told anybody about this, that Moriarty was involved in this (which he certainly wasn't going to, he knew that much), nobody would believe him. After all, who wouldn't believe charismatic, charming, sweet, sugar-boy Jimmy as opposed to heartless, awkward and rude Sherlock Holmes?

Would John believe him?

He didn't even talk to him. He had forgotten that Sherlock even existed, that there was still a student who tried to just _be_ a student in a class with a professor that he fancied, that Sherlock still missed the feeling of surging adrenaline that only John could bring inside him. He would never, ever admit to John just how much he missed him. It would be too humbling.

John didn't even know how precious he was to Sherlock. And that Sherlock would do anything not to bring to light the nature of their relationship—if only one could call it that—in front of Jim.

He thought whether he should warn John. He knew he would sound mad, delusional, pathetic, paranoid, and he knew that John would certainly kick him out again and maybe file a lawsuit of stalking against him and he knew that if he managed to reach even within a metre of John, he would end up pinning him against the wall and start sodomizing him right there in front of whomever was shameless enough to watch.

No. He wasn't going to do that. It was painfully obvious to the world that he had nothing for Sherlock. Even Sherlock himself thought so.

He could still feel Jim watching him, even if he wasn't present there physically.

Sherlock began walking to wherever his feet could carry him on their own accord. It was his study hour, and he was free as a bird. He tried to wonder why Moriarty would tell him, give him clues. What did he want from Sherlock?

The autopsy should reveal that.

 

* * *

 

The autopsy was a major backfire.

Powers hadn't died of electric shock as well. Sherlock had already realised when they had let him see Powers' body (very, _very_ unwillingly, saying that it wasn't allowed and then Sherlock was allowed only when he told the pathology resident that stealing Ritalin supplies was also not allowed), he had realised that it couldn't be a electric shock. There was no burn mark on his finger, and there was no way in which fibrillation could've been the cause of death.

It was obvious as hell. How would the muscles of his heart be influenced if it was the muscles in his  hand which should've been affected?

He had underestimated Moriarty, his brains. He shouldn't have done that.

Powers had died of natural causes. No cardiac arrest inducing drugs were found or no antipsychotics which Sherlock had earlier suspected because he had (jokingly) thought that Jim might be on them.

Sherlock tried to argue with them that Powers was regularly on his meds. His mother cried her eyes out for the umpteenth time. Molly apologized to them for the inconvenience, and Sherlock talked with the moderately intelligent pathology resident a little more, when he found out that his knowledge was a little incomplete.

She simply told him that Powers was, _had to be_ off his meds. There were no traces of any of those compounds. And then she told Sherlock that he was really inconsiderate and that he should've respected the parents' wishes.

Sherlock paid no attention to it. How did Jim do this, induce a cardiac arrest? As Molly drove him back to his flat that late night, Sherlock kept thinking, turning it around and around, hoping to see it from a different angle. Powers never forgot his meds, or was that a faulty assumption? He had no way to determine that.

He tried to reconstruct what must have happened during the exam. He had seen Powers' fingers, his thumbs and he could see it written on them that he used a click pen. The black one found upon his body wasn't a click pen. He tried to imagine what could have happened with the assumption that Powers didn't take his meds. He must have pushed the retraceable cylinder downwards, and he had begun to write. As his exam paper suggested, he had written quite an amount with the blue ink before he had lapsed into cardiac arrest. Therefore, it was something that wasn't quick, unlike electric shock.

His phone buzzed absently in his pocket. He didn't pick up. He was sure that it was Mycroft bugging him again. He simply stared dreamily out of the window.

He thought about why those compounds in Powers' meds would be absent from his bloodstream. One, he hadn't taken them. Two, he had somehow been given an antidote which counteracted the compounds present for long enough to cause the cardiac arrest. But nothing of that nature had been found in his body and there was bound to be some quantity remaining in his blood, and autopsy should've revealed that. Suppose that antidote was there in his water, how would Jim know that Powers would drink the exact amount to counteract the effects of the medication?

Yet, he was more inclined towards the option two. It really didn't matter to him whether he could or couldn't prove Moriarty's guilt. He just wanted to figure out how he did it, without Moriarty telling him, had he had no idea why he wanted to do that.

Moriarty hadn't been in the same room as Powers. He had to have an accomplice, and maybe if Sherlock found out who, maybe then he could establish his guilt by going through the accomplice.

But the missing pen bugged him the most. Why would it go missing? What purpose would be gained by that? Was it the murder weapon? Likely not. The electrocuting was an outlandish thing, although very easy. All one needed to do was up the current, and make it AC current instead of DC. But this, this was far more outlandish.

Why was Moriarty doing this? What did he gain from all this? What was he doing, killing an innocent boy just to play around with Sherlock and watching him dance?

He had to find that missing pen. Every classroom had a security camera in the corner, and it must have recorded who had taken that pen and it must have recorded what had exactly happened during the exam. Sherlock was certain that it was the missing pen which held the answers.

He stole a glance at Molly, sweet, innocent, brave and loyal Molly. Would she agree to it, watching the tapes in the control room? No, she would tell him that it was illegal, and she was always such a frightened little mouse. And would she tell Jim about it, even if he asked her not to? For the first time in his life, Sherlock found himself doubting his trust on Molly. She could let it slip anytime, she wasn't as careful or as clever as Moriarty was , was she?

All he knew was that Molly couldn't be trusted any more. At least not until she broke up with Jim, which was proving to be increasingly difficult for Sherlock.

He hated Moriarty. Hated him for not being able to trust his own best friend.

"Here we are," she pulled up near 221B, and Sherlock groaned, letting out an exasperated sigh.

"What is my brother doing here?" Said he, glaring at the door knocker and the 'B' which had lost one of its screws.

"Good night then," Molly shook her head and took off, while Sherlock continued to talk to himself.

"He's straightened the knocker. He always corrects it. He's OCD. Doesn't even  _know_  when he does it."

He turned back towards the street to see Molly was already gone. Rolling his eyes, he deliberately pushed the door knocker to one side, letting himself in as he hurried up the steps to find Mycroft sitting in _his_ favourite armchair.

"Should pick your phone up, brother dear," he chastised as Sherlock heaved an all-suffering sigh, "Sherlock, are you sure—"

"Get out of my flat!" he snapped, "I've had a bad enough day."

But Mycroft smiled an entirely insincere smile as he took a flash drive out of his breast pocket and set it down on Sherlock's desk after finding a clean enough place for it, "Seeing as I'm the one who pays your rent and your bills Sherlock, I'm allowed to stay here as long as I like.... But if you really need to move back to Mummy's, you should tell me the _real_ reason."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, "Aren't I allowed to miss my own mother?"

Mycroft forced a chuckle out of his self-important mouth, "Don't be so obtuse. Sherlock... I'm warning you again. He's your teacher—"

"Why are you here?" Sherlock asked exasperatedly, changing the subject to anything, anything else at all.

Mycroft looked down to check the shine of his shoes as he awkwardly leant his weight on his poor umbrella. Sherlock and Molly had had a wager on how long Mycroft's new umbrella would survive. Needless to say, Sherlock had lost.

When Sherlock looked up again, Mycroft was looking at him steadily. He pursed his lips together, rolling the words around in his mouth like he was tasting them. And then, to Sherlock complete and utter annoyance, he dropped that expression altogether, instead choosing a well-cultivated mask of humourless humour, "Check your phone, and whatever is there on that flash drive. I'm out of here."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. Mycroft wanted to say something else but he had decided against it, and he couldn't be bothered to find out what it was, seeing that it always was some triviality, "That's all? You came, you _travelled_ all the way from Pall Mall till here at this time of night to give me a flash drive and to inform me to check my phone."

Mycroft smiled, " Aren't I allowed to miss my own brother?"

And with that, and very loud footsteps, he was gone, leaving Sherlock utterly bemused. He took out his phone, and was welcomed by endless number of missed calls from...

"John?!" Sherlock's heart pumped hard and fast in his chest upon seeing his name and the sheer number of times he had called him, texted him, sent him slurred drunken voicemails. He closed his eyes and frowned darkly upon seeing them, not bringing himself to read every single of them. He now knew what the flash drive was about... or he had at least a clue. With a heart of stone, he plugged it into his laptop...

 

* * *

 

"Any questions, Mr. Holmes?" John paused in his lecture to glare at Sherlock over the tops of his glasses the next day. "You've been quiet."

Sherlock looked up at him to send that glare reeling backwards in John's direction. He thought he would be furious, after all John had no right to bang on the front door of his flat and traumatise Mrs. Hudson, the dear old lady who presumably didn't tell Sherlock anything because Mycroft was going to deal with it in his own manner. He thought he would look upon at John with nothing less than disgust upon having shown up drunk in the first place, or he thought he would at least be pissed with John for first rejecting him in his sober state and then cursing him when he was inebriated. He felt embarrassment, actual embarrassment that his brother had to come down at his flat at such a time to ensure that Sherlock was alright and that people at Mycroft's disposal had to manhandle John.

And he called himself a bloody professor. And he said that it wasn't right. And he had said that Sherlock won't come find him or talk to him or follow him. Hypocrite.

Sherlock felt nothing but nothingness, like he should've somehow expected this from him. He clenched his jaw, and continued scribbling his pen against paper uselessly, not letting sentiment betray his composure to John, or Jim who sat two benches behind him.

"No sir," said he, sounding bored, "None at all."

Sherlock could feel Jim's penetrating but somehow vacant gaze assessing the topography of the back of his shoulders carefully, looking for some hitch or some giveaway. He no longer sat with Jim when he found out that he couldn't tolerate the feeling of being even within a metre of him. Molly looked surprised and a little miffed at that. Sherlock yawned despite himself and stretched his legs to his fullest.

John was a hypocrite. He had followed whatever he had said to the letter. But how dare he show up drunk at his doorstep? Sherlock could only thank the autopsy that he didn't have to witness that. He wasn't sure he could take the sight of John cursing him, calling him names like that. He had stayed away, hadn't he? The coldness in his eyes made John flinch a little bit, and for the tiniest bit, the stern-professor-facade slipped away to reveal the guilt in him.

John turned his back to him, and continued with his lecture until he called the class dismissed. Still turning in his mind the ways to get to the control room and feeling the flash drive in his pocket to transfer the footage into, Sherlock rose from his desk, and tucked his shirt into his jeans before walking out by himself and not bothering to join Molly and Jim.

"Mr. Holmes?" He heard a tetchy voice behind him. It was Monday and Sherlock tried not to recall the conversations he had had with John back when they were just teacher and student. Sherlock bit the insides of his cheeks. He couldn't ignore John calling for him. He really couldn't. It was the first time John had spoken to him in weeks, the first time John had even acknowledged Sherlock's existence, beyond a generous grade and vague comment on Sherlock's assignments, since the day he'd told Sherlock to pretend they'd never made love.

But he didn't want to hear any silly "sorry" stories and excuses for his inexcusable behaviour. If that was as close as he could come to conversation with John, he'd rather not have it. He didn't want to waste his time in something that meant nothing at all. He had to go up the control room, steal his way into it...

"May I talk to you for a moment?"

Sherlock spun around, all cold eyes assessing whether this was going to be of any value, "What is it?"

John waited till every student had left and then he locked the door behind him. For some very irrational reason, Sherlock wanted to protest at that, but when he saw John's red face, he closed his mouth and waited for him to start. And this time, he wasn't going to give in like he did last time.

"Take a seat," John waved him towards the chair closest to his desk. Just to annoy him, Sherlock took the other chair and he saw John notice that. John blinked twice, pausing to say something, but then he thought better of it.

"Look here, Mr. Holmes—"

Sherlock exhaled a breath he didn't know he had been holding, "Look, either you can talk and drop that ridiculous charade of 'Mr. Holmes' when it doesn't matter to me what you call me—after whatever you called me yesterday."

John's face was as red as a beetroot as he avoided Sherlock's eyes. "You weren't there."

"No," he leaned back in his chair, "My brother gave me the area CCTV tape, perhaps to teach me a hard-earned lesson."

"Oh Jesus!" John ran his fingers through his hair and groaned in dismay, "I had thought—I had—"

"Nice touch too," Sherlock exclaimed as bitterly as he could, "Calling my mobile a hundred times and leaving... inspirational slurred texts and voicemails, that too."

John had never felt anything as humiliating as this, Sherlock could tell by the way he winced at the weakness in his own voice. His heart called out for him, swelling up at an alarming rate at the sight of him. He felt like every part of his body had begun to ache as his breathing picked up, forcing itself down his throat and into his oxygen-deprived lungs.

"I didn't mean to inconvenience you." John said sheepishly. Sherlock laughed humourlessly.

"Right, that's all you've got to say—"

"What do you want me to say?" John snapped. "I'm sorry I got drunk and had your brother take me away?!"

"You said it," said Sherlock, looking at him, his features curled into a cold snarl that was drier and angrier than John had ever remembered him being all those months ago, and he blanched at the thought of having contributed to such bitterness. "I didn't know you had such high opinion of me," Sherlock continued dryly.

John's navy blue eyes latched onto Sherlock's grey ones guiltily, "I could say the same for you."

So, the verbal volleyball was in his court now. Sherlock tossed it around, preparing for a smash hit to his defences, "You have no idea."

With that, he stood up and strutted across to the door, when a single word stopped him in his tracks. "Sherlock."

He froze in his steps, remembering all the times, the intimacy associated with the way John took his name while he orgasmed inside him, the time he had been pinned between Sherlock's sweaty body above him and the mattress under him. It felt like an entire universe had reopened between them as he took his name.

"I believe you, by the way."

There it was, but Sherlock held himself back, kept his back stiff to John. He felt his heart rate pick up at that. John believed him, of all people, he believed him. But he needed to confirm it, even though he knew what he had heard. John had a most amazing talent of denial, "Pardon?"

"The... erm—the Powers thing..." Sherlock melted at how weak and vulnerable and hesitant John sounded, "I.... about the Powers thing, I—I think it's odd.... too, the murder—"

Sherlock wanted to snap at him, to ask him how, and why he was saying this.

"Is this a pathetic way to make up for your actions yesterday?" Sherlock turned to him, this time his voice calmer than usual, "Or are you just giving me false symp—"

"I mean it," John interrupted, his voice as steady as a game man facing a firing squad, "Powers wouldn't do anything like that. He was one of the most meticulous people I've ever met. If it were such a life-threatening condition, he would never have got off them."

Sherlock studied him for a few minutes, eyeing him with all hostility he could gather. John seemed to believe him, to trust whatever conspiracy theories he had been making since Day One.

"How do you know it was murder?" Sherlock breathed, his voice uncharacteristically incredulous as his face dropped, fell somehow at once both entirely expressionless and unguarded for the shortest of moments.

John took a step back, "I didn't kill him, if that's what you mean." This made Sherlock smile, just a little half-smile, before a memory came to him.

 _I could destroy your whole world, Sherlock,_ came Jim's sing-song voice. He swallowed, trying to get his breath back before stealing a look at John, meeting his heavy gaze with his own. His face was so open, so unguarded and he didn't know if he would be able to take it if Jim somehow knew what they were hiding from the rest of the world.

It was probably the stupidest thing Sherlock could have done in that one moment of weakness; a foolhardy, reckless, inconceivable thing.

It was also a necessary thing.

John could do this. John could help him. Even if he had told himself that he would never ever get near the alluring danger that was John, he couldn't stay away.

He held his breath in his lungs, waiting for him to say yes after every time John had said no.

 

* * *

 

"No," said John very firmly, crossing his arms in his best "don't-argue-with-me" pose. It always worked on Harry before. Once or twice, anyway. "Absolutely not." He knew, or he tried to convince himself that this may be the only way in which Sherlock could forgive him for being so horrible to him. He was young after all, and John knew he shouldn't have been so cruel to him, but it was the only way, and it worked, didn't it? But it was he who couldn't stay away. Didn't want to stay away.

"But _why_ not?" Sherlock asked impatiently, all of their previous hesitation forgotten. John could see Sherlock opening up but this wasn't the scenario he had expected. He had never expected to get entangled with Sherlock again, but now, here he was because he just couldn't stay away. Not when it came to Sherlock. The yesterday night had just proved it, and through all the embarrassment, he managed to say a big no.

"Because I don't fancy being arrested. Or my job being compromised."

John couldn't understand how Sherlock could be so normal, so.... like what he used to be to him before all that. How could he? How?

"Oh, John." Sherlock let out a dramatic sigh, linking his ankles together and leaning against the wall of John's room. It was like nothing had happened between them, except John was continuously reminded of it in every manner. Sherlock simply huffed in an all-too familiar manner that made hot blood rise shamelessly in John's neck and his face.

"There's very little chance that we would get arrested for watching the university CCTV tapes—"

" _Illegally_ watching the CCTV tapes," John corrected him, "I can't let you do this, as a teacher."

"—and anyway I'm the one doing the illegal bit," Sherlock continued, unabated. "You'll just be distracting him. And you get to keep your pathetic job."

John rubbed a hand across his forehead. "How do you even know those will be there? I bet it has already been erased."

"They're too stupid to do that," Sherlock spoke, looking a bit preoccupied, "All I have to do is sneak back into the office and watch them while you distract the campus guard."

John frowned. "Why don't you copy them yourself? It would be quicker, so there would be less chance of getting caught."

Sherlock smirked, and John realized belatedly that he had just been tricked into behaving like he had already agreed to do this. It was just like old times, bickering and arguing. John wished, how badly he wished to be that again. The things that John didn't acknowledge to him still vibrated and echoed in the space between them, even if he tried to deny it, even if Sherlock behaved like he was alright with it whereas deep-down inside, even if it didn't show on his face, John knew how hurt he must be. Because after all that had happened, John couldn't bear to be in his classrooms or in his office, couldn't bear to walk the corridors and think of what had occurred inside and beyond them, and what he'd let escape out of them like so many wisps of cigarette smoke, and if this was what he felt, he couldn't imagine what Sherlock did.

Nevertheless, he still walked and taught normally and laughed away without Sherlock and his obscene jokes and his flirtatious remarks, and with an even voice, just an even voice...

"I'm not saying I'm going to help you—"

"Oh, come on, John," Sherlock breathed, and suddenly he was standing very, very close. John's pulse sped up. His well-honed senses prickled but he could feel the warmth emanating from Sherlock's body and see his pale eyes alight with the promise of adventure. For a mad moment, John imagined grabbing his face and kissing him breathless right there. His whole body tingled with need and desire and longing. He restrained himself with a tight swallow and a cough at that. God knew he missed him and that he was never going to admit to him or to himself just how much.

"Have a little fun, for once in your life," Sherlock whispered, stepping away, looking almost regretful, and John's heart gave a foolish pang at that. "Stop being so responsible. That's not really who you are."

The truth of this hit so hard that John was almost angry, but then Sherlock turned around, expecting John to follow, and there he was, not caring that his next class would start in half-an-hour and that this was illegal, and so, so wrong and that it was so good to be wrong and that he could be thrown out of the university and he didn't want that. So, he followed Sherlock out, ignoring all the little warning bells pealing in his head.

"Yes. Yes, fine, yes, I'll help you break into the campus security system, damn you," he said in a rush of intoxicating adrenaline as he jogged to keep up with Sherlock. "You win."

 

* * *

 

It was the most heartbreakingly wonderful thing, helping Sherlock, following his commands, going up the routes in St. B that John had never known could exist. He knew that he wouldn't be forgiven even after this, but there was this narrow window that he saw open as the hard edge of Sherlock's impenetrable barrier sagged ever so slightly, and he took a jump through it gracelessly.

And he had no idea why.

Sherlock instructions were clear. Distract the guard till Sherlock went in to copy the security footage for that hour from ten minutes before the start of the exam till the moment Sherlock had come in, so that he knew exactly what had happened . John had agreed to it standing on one leg. It was easier than John had initially expected—and a hell of a lot more fun. John had no idea how to distract the security guard. Do some stunt? Engage him in talk? Throw a cat out of the window?

"You can use you mobile, call him and distract him," Sherlock spoke, his eyes all attention on the door, "I have his number. Distract the man till I steal the footage."

"You're not stealing it," John pointed out petulantly, "you're copying it." Sherlock simply smirked.

Believe what you like, professor," he simpered. "Distracting isn't a difficult thing! Do a . . . prank call or something, but not as stupid as you did me once upon a time."

John's smile faded at the unacknowledged pun. Everything that they had had before that night seemed to have been erased completely from his mind, blinded in the glare of what they made. Nevertheless, John handed Sherlock his mobile and the latter dialled a number which John suspected to be that of the campus security guard. Sherlock blew out a breath before he pressed the call button.

"Uh oh," John pointed out, "caller ID."

"Not when you connect from Information," Sherlock corrected impatiently.

It took two rings for the guy to pick it up. He had a strict Northern accent and a gruff voice which John could hear even if he was at a safe distance from both Sherlock and the speaker, " _Hallo_?"

"Is this Mr. Harry Parker?" Sherlock almost whispered and signalled to John to hide in a more unaccesible crook under the stairwell. John followed.

" _Yeah_?"

"I'm calling from the police station. . ." John spun around at Sherlock's words, and Sherlock gave him a look that said _this is how a prank call is done, instead of your stupid, half-hearted attempts_. "You work in the University of St. Bart's, yes?"

" _Yes sir_. . ." Now the guard's voice seemed far more apprehensive.

Sherlock looked like he had to improvise the whole thing all by himself and glared daggers at John for being so unhelpful, ". . . We've just received report that your life is in danger."

John wanted to laugh out loud. It was the same thing he had tried with Sherlock not two months ago when the latter had been gone for Christmas. Whether Sherlock was just giving him a demonstration of how an effective prank call was like, or was rekindling the old spark of affection by reliving the old memories, John didn't know.

" _What? . . . How, sir?_ "

"No need to panic, no need to panic," Sherlock whispered as quietly as possible as John stared at him incredulously. "Just listen to me carefully, or else. . . you'll get _killed_ as you step out of the university gates!"

" _Why_?" came the now frantic voice, " _What_ _happened_?"

"Uh. . . hold on a second," he motioned to John with his eyes to follow him. Sherlock stuck his head out of the stairwell and peeped round the corner. The guard was looking in the other direction, his nerves clearly frayed and waiting for the next instruction so that he could save his life, "The chief is on the other line."

"Great," Sherlock whispered to John and handed him his mobile, "you take over. I'm going to go in."

"What?" John felt a stab of tension, "How am I going to tell the guard how to. . .?" He turned to ask but Sherlock had already stood up and swept away like an overgrown pixie towards the control room. John hardened himself. Sherlock was depending on him. Sherlock was counting on him. He must do this. He had to do this somehow. However ridiculous it was.

". . . how to save himself from getting killed?" John finished anyway. He heaved an all-suffering sigh when frantic exclamations of " _Hello, sir_?" came from the phone. John felt like an utter idiot and slouched against the stairs, hoping no one heard him.

This was so wrong, John thought as Sherlock sneaked into the control room. Was everything normal between the two of them? No. Hardly. John could see that Sherlock avoided talking or contact if at all possible, except for a vague explanation just like he had treated Sherlock all this time. Sherlock didn't smile the way he used to smile at him. Sherlock was never the one for boundaries, and unlike a touch on the wrist as a signal, he had resorted to say, "Look over there," and not even his name. The intense sparks which lit up in his belly whenever Sherlock locked eyes with him were now only a duplicate shadow. They were, as was the common parlance, avoiding each other. At least Sherlock was doing that. John had no idea what  _he_  was doing except for trying to follow Sherlock blindly.

John knew that as soon as Sherlock arrived with the footage copied in his flash drive, he wasn't going to spare him a second look. He was going to go away, leaving John alone there to teach his class, which was going to start in fifteen minutes.

" Yes... so where was I?"

" _You-you said I-I may die. . . outside the-the g-gate. . .?_ " came the god-fearing voice. John gathered his nerves and spoke anyway.

Adrenaline spiked through John, throwing all his senses into overdrive. Just as he thought he was afraid that he would seize up, giving the whole game away and letting Sherlock down, a sort of miraculous calm came over him, and he felt as though he was looking at the situation from quite some distance. As if it were purely academic, the question of what to do next.

"Uh, right. . . Now," John tried to put in sound effects into his prank phone call, "as you get out of the gate, you'll see a traffic signal. Okay?"

He peeped around the corner. This was wrong. This was so wrong. He was a bloody professor. And he was making a security guard take notes, actual notes, on how he would save his life. John felt guilty at that, but that was overridden by the tension that Sherlock was still in there doing God-knows-what.

" _T-traffic signal, okay_." The man was on edge now. John sent him a non-verbal apology on Sherlock's behalf. He could just see why Ms. Hooper always apologised on his behalf.

"When it turns red, R-E-D, all the cars will halt."

" _Okay. T-then_?"

"Then?. . . Oh, right. Then cross the road with great caution. Carefully. One-two, one-two . . ."

"One-two," the guard repeated, his voice trembling. John had begun to doubt the campus security selection committee of St. Bart's by now, " _and then_?"

"Carefully," John decreed, his imagination coming to a halt, "one-two, one-two. From the zebra crossing. . . Because son, if a car hits you during rush hour, you're dead."

John saw the STAFF ONLY door open a crack, a sliver of Sherlock's face visible, searching the corridor to make sure no one was watching. John gave him a tiny nod and Sherlock slipped out, switching immediately into casual student, bystander mode.

Warmth crept across John's cheekbones as Sherlock's eyes met his and the gaze lingered, and for the first time in many days, John felt a little off-kilter. But that was interrupted by the guard's rasping voice.

" _What nonsense! I-I know that!_ " The guard's voice gained whatever sand he had lost. John decided that he could bring the call to an end.

"Oh, you know that? Excellent, excellent! Then you're safe, my boy." And click, the phone went off. John wanted to smile back at Sherlock, wanted Sherlock to look at him the way he used to, tender eyes. No, John shook himself. He had spurned it—then—he had denied them, he had abused Sherlock's attentions, his affection.

And then Sherlock's eyes turned cold again and he disappeared around the corner. John followed behind, feeling elated and embarrassed at the same time after having left the security guard so abruptly. The former feeling vanished when he saw no sign of Sherlock near the place where he thought he would be waiting for him and disappointment sunk into place.

John told himself breathlessly that he understood, that he deserved that sort of treatment after yesterday's event and dragged his way to his class only to be met by the sight of Sherlock and Jim talking somewhere in the corridor. John felt like a schoolboy when he hid behind a corner and decided to observe them. Had Sherlock moved on? Already? After everything? Was it that easy for him to move on from him even after all that, all eight months of drama and what could've been called courting in the 19th century? John's heart pounded against his ribs and he was surprised that he didn't collapse into a heap of skin and bones with the amount of unrest inside him.

Well, it was okay, John thought bitterly. Sherlock deserved someone his age, someone intelligent like him if not as clever as him. Someone who almost matched and challenged his intellect.

As he approached them, feeling like a spy, he could tell that Sherlock wasn't exactly comfortable with Jim, and yet like he usually did, he didn't choose to run away or just ask Jim to stuff it. Even though Sherlock was probably the bravest person John had ever met, he could tell that he was genuinely afraid of the way Jim reached out for him. Then, Sherlock shoved him away, and John saw a side of Jim Moriarty he thought he would never see: the manic, high-pitched laughter which sounded like breaking glass to his ears. His senses were screaming to him to go to Sherlock, to lead him away like he did with those bullies and even Dean Hope once upon a time.

"Don't you want to know _how_ I killed him, Sherlock? You're going the right way, sexy."

And then Sherlock's eyes met his. He looked, to John's utter horror and disbelief, terrified. He didn't know that Sherlock could be terrified, even. He had never imagined Sherlock like that. No, Sherlock was always cool, always in charge. His pale face which had been a little coloured blanched immediately. When he saw Moriarty's head turning towards him, he took it as his cue to duck and leave, his heart hammering ceaselessly in his chest as he contemplated his exit routes.

"Who is it?" He heard footsteps, followed by Moriarty's now completely normal voice, "Come out and play!" He heard another heavier set of footsteps, and he knew Sherlock was following Jim. A moment later, he heard the thud of a single body against the small followed by that of a strangled whisper, "Go fuck yourself, Moriarty."

At this point, John's alarm beep in his phone rang out, signalling that his class was about to begin, audible enough for both of them to hear. He turned around, and promptly left for his class, unable to process what he had just heard from Moriarty's mouth.

 

* * *

 

Just before the end of the day, John began piling his various papers, books, and other detritus from his desk in his office, organising his workplace for a fresher tomorrow. There was a hesitant knock on his door.

"Yeah, come in," John called absently, not bothering to see who had come in as he continued to clean his desk.

Sherlock was standing in the doorway, looking straight through John, a slight crease in his eyebrows. Knowing that it was rare for Sherlock to use profanity on anyone, the unpleasant memories of the bullying episode with Moriarty returned and he waved him into a seat with a nod, waiting patiently for him to start. He wasn't going to—

"I thought. . . maybe you'd like to watch this," Sherlock held up the flash drive, and spoke in a tone that was both hard and bashful at the same time.

"Oh," John managed rather intelligently. He hadn't expected that, "I—erm—"

"I suppose if you don't want to—" Sherlock began, almost ready to walk out of there, but John maintained a straight face, speaking plainly, evenly, difficultly.

"I'd like that."

With a sharp nod, Sherlock shifted to sit on a chair beside John and plugged the flash drive into John's computer, and clicked on the file as Sherlock watched the whole thing with his full, undivided attention as he triumphantly pointed out how Powers had taken his meds, like he knew him to be. John foolishly felt that he should say something.

"Listen… about what happened between us—"

"That's over. It's in the past. Done," Sherlock looked down and pretended to fast forward the clip. His attempt at a careless demeanour was betrayed by the unsubtle bobbing of his right thigh beneath the desk.

"It's not. Not really for me," John replied, trying and failing to meet his eyes.

Sherlock paused it and looked up, his eyes open and expressive once more. "What are you saying?" He asked carefully.

"I suppose I'm saying I was wrong. About all of it. . .. I was wrong to seek you out and let you make yourself so vulnerable. I was wrong for implying that you were the only one who made a mistake. I was wrong to let you leave." John swallowed in a harsh gulp, and then continued. "I was horrible to you, and I never apologized. I shouldn't have—"

"Stop." Sherlock's eyes appeared uncharacteristically wet and John looked away, offering him a moment of privacy. He turned back when Sherlock cleared his throat and straightened the line of his torso.

"That's unimportant now," he added, quietly, and shifted in his seat. John hesitantly put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, and Sherlock didn't flinch away.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock. I am," John said, "about all of it, about yesterday. I can't say I don't mean whatever I said, but—"

Sherlock didn't smile one of his rare, genuine little half-smiles, and John dropped his hand disappointedly, letting it lie on the arm of the chair in the space between them, a scant handful of centimetres from Sherlock's own as Sherlock continued watching the clip.

Finally, he spoke.

"You mean—you meant that I—I destroyed your life. . ." John could hear him speak with difficulty, but he managed to. At least. He looked down guiltily.

"Then why don't you simply ask me to get out of your life? Why do you keep running in circles—"

"Because. . ." John swallowed, gulped like a helpless fish. There was nothing he could say which would sound proper and which would not drive Sherlock away.

He bit his lip, "Because. . . I don't want you to."

Sherlock paused the clip again, and John could see the index finger on the mouse trembling, a twitch jumping right under his skin. John was tempted to touch it.

"You don't or you wouldn't?"

John knew what Sherlock was implying, and no, this wasn't out of guilt. This was out of need, out of necessity, tainted with selfishness.

"I. . . I can't. . ." And words became difficult for John here. He didn't remember the last time he had found it so difficult force words out of his throat, and he knew Sherlock could see tears gathering at the corner of his eyes like a girl's, "I'm sorry."

"Why?" This time, Sherlock's voice was much harder, not croaky, not weak. He didn't need knowledge, John knew, or at least pretended that Sherlock could hear what he wasn't saying, only that Sherlock, like he always did, needed reassurance.

"Let's. . . focus on the footage, shall we?" John cleared his throat, and clicked 'Resume', avoiding Sherlock's fingers deliberately even though his entire body tingled with anticipation upon feeling the heat emanating from him, or maybe it was just the thermostat. Sherlock wasn't paying attention, or so he thought, and soon enough, he clicked 'Pause' again.

"What?" He demanded. John knew this was going to happen. He should never have let Sherlock in, not without preparing for the answers he knew he was going to throw in his direction.

"I should've known you'd be like this—"

"What if I leave? Because frankly, I can get into anywhere, even abroad, and you know it, John. You think _you_ know always want the best for me, don't you? Daddy knows what's best for me—"

"Stop calling me John!"

"What does it matter?" Sherlock snarled, looking infuriatingly confused at everything that John threw at him, "Why does it matter to you so much, what I call you when it clearly shouldn't? You want what's best for me? The best option is to leave."

John knew it. Sherlock was better than St. Bart's. Hell, Sherlock was better than all the universities in the world put together. But he wanted him here, didn't he? Because he knew that Sherlock made it all bearable white noise for him, this business of teaching, and that once Sherlock left, John knew he wouldn't be able to stay anymore. If it was only the knowledge that Sherlock was still there and that he attended two classes a week for two hours in total, it was enough for him to be getting on with.

"Don't," John uttered weakly, "Please."

"You're not leading me on," Sherlock said shortly. "I trust you. I wish you trusted me."

John shifted uncomfortably where he was. "I. . . do. . ." he said uncertainly.

Sherlock sat back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the monitor, "Look," he said coldly. "I understand. I really do, but you need to decide what you really want. You seem to want both and—"

"You don't! You pretend to be this all-understanding figure.  _Oh, I'm Sherlock Holmes and I'm the king of the world and I understand everything because I'm a bloody genius_  but you don't," John retorted. "And I don't need psychology lessons from you of all people."

He didn't reply. John felt an inward pang of irritation and unease. He felt like he had exposed himself in some unforgivable manner, but he was certain he hadn't done anything wrong.

Sherlock turned away. John watched him, looking for some sign that he didn't really think John so fickle and pathetic. He didn't understand. He didn't know how Sherlock could be so certain about another person and their feelings.

"You need to make sure this is what you want, John," Sherlock said finally, straightening up in his chair. "I'm not interested in playing games with you."

"What do  _you_  want?"

"You don't need me to tell you." He reminded him again, "You know it. I've been telling you that since months."

"This is what you came for, didn't you?" John let out a humourless laugh and shook his head, wearing his glasses back like some sort of battle armour, "Under the pretext of watching a—"

"Need I remind you, you started it. I'm just trying to end it so that I can focus on this again." He pointed at the monitor in blank frustration. John straightened his back and nodded to himself. He looked stung for a moment and then his features rapidly hardened.

"Fine. Conversation over."

"So you're going to storm off again like a child?" Sherlock snapped, his eyes desperately flickering towards the door. "Why don't you stay long enough so we can talk about it—"

"There's nothing to talk about!" John rounded on him. "You have no understanding of other people! You have no consideration for what I go through, you care for only yourself."

"I care about you. . . a lot," the words sounded unsteady and clumsy coming from Sherlock's mouth even though there was nothing he could be more sure about. He knew that John was angry and didn't mean it and yet it stung quite a bit, "I didn't know you needed me to tell you that."

John swallowed and sat down beside him, trying to seek comfort in the warmth that radiated from his body, "I've told you, Sherlock—"

"So, you mean we can't be together, and yet you don't want me to go, just leave us hanging. . . what sort of a verdict is that?"

"You know what's going to happen if people found out, didn't they?"

Sherlock scoffed at that, "You weren't very worried about it today when I broke into the control room."

John took a breath down his pinhole-thin throat. Why was Sherlock being so frustrating when it was so hard to get it out, "That was a one-time thing. And besides you won't be expelled for that, as much as you'll be expelled for being with me—"

"Trust me, I'm more than amenable to that idea."

"I'm not! You'll leave," John snapped finally, letting out his deepest fear and sounding utterly ridiculous, "I can't have that. Happy?"

Sherlock looked like he had suddenly had a grand epiphany. He swallowed, and John knew that no more words were needed. He had spent enough time watching Sherlock to still be able to see the change, to see the instant all the brick and mortar of the wall between them began to crumble like so much sawdust. Sherlock took a deep breath, and clicked it to 'Resume' again.

"There," he pointed at something in Powers' hand hoarsely, "The pen that is missing." He paused it and zoomed the screenshot which he took. It was a click pen.

"Okay," John's voice was equally rough. Sherlock felt a faint stir of longing at that. He clicked 'Resume' again.

Powers went into cardiac arrest, class gathered around him, one or two of them administered the compressions—correctly, Sherlock noted—and then it happened.

A girl approached Powers' desk from the other side and picked up the pen as everyone's attention was on the dying student. Sherlock paused the footage and scanned her features. He didn't even know that she existed. This must be Moriarty's accomplice.

Asian, long straight black hair, Sherlock had never even seen her, but John had, once he turned to him to ask him who it was.

"Hang on, isn't that. . . Miss Yao?"

Sherlock frowned, "Miss who?"

"Miss Yao," John frowned, "Soo Lin Yao."


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, all I can say that you might be disappointed by this chapter a little. I had played with the idea of whatever I did here because technically, in canon, Carl's trainers weren't the actual murder weapon. His medication was switched.
> 
> That being said and assuming that I've prepared you for what's coming. . .
> 
> Again, very very sorry for the humungously long delay, although I know sorrys aren't going to make up for it, so I hope this chapter does

"Miss Yao," John frowned, crossing his arms and pointing at the monitor, "Soo Lin Yao."

It took Sherlock approximately half-a-minute to recapitulate the synopsis of the whole Carl Powers thing, how it began, under what circumstances it began. Sudden cardiac arrest leading to death, Powers' lifeless body on the cold stone floor, Professor Lombard administering him CPR after it was too late, the coroner, John's clearly shocked face, the disappearance of the pen when he was clearly in the middle of an examination, nothing showing up in autopsy reports, the tears of his mother. . .

Sherlock tried to prune away the useless sentimental memories of John, of the mother and the sister crying, the father in grief, but it was hard, by God it was hard to forget those faces. Sherlock wished it did not affect it more than the curious death itself did. Such emotion was useless, after all it wasn't going to serve any purpose, was it?

And the footage was showing that he had been right all along, but what could a pen do? Kill someone? And why would Moriarty do that? What was he doing, showing off to Sherlock by staging it so theatrically? Why did he have to make it so complicated when the endgame was Powers' death, when there were millions of easy methods to kill a person: undetectable poisons, throwing him down the stairs, or even the third floor or the terrace, a simple stab and blame it on someone else.

Moriarty could've done any of that with the help of anyone under his influence, under the power of blackmail if he could've managed leverage on a completely nondescript person as this Asian girl.

Everybody had secrets that they didn't want anybody else to know but themselves: girl cheating on boyfriend, illegal teacher-student relationships, the science student government secretary dealing drugs, a group of students planning to leak the final exam papers, the Student Union conspiring to overthrow the Vice Chancellor, first year mechanical engineering students who blew up the voltage inverter in the machine workshop but managed to get away with it and similar stuff. . .

Jim could've got loads. Sherlock wasn't the one for assumptions without proper data but Soo Lin didn't look like she had anything like that, anything generally bad about her. There was a certain. . . sacredness to her appearance, like whatever secret she had might make an impact on him.

Such thoughts crossed Sherlock's mind before he asked the question of the hour.

"Soo Lin?" He asked in genuine confusion.

John nodded, taking his glasses off and pointing at the little Asian figure on the screen. He didn't realise that Sherlock had been staring into his irises for a couple of seconds more than normal.

"Soo Lin Yao. Exchange student from China. . . or whatever they call it, you know."

"Oh," Sherlock nodded seriously, "what did they exchange her for?"

It was a lame joke, he knew that. It was a meagre, unconscious attempt at humour; nevertheless, he stole a glance at John for his reaction. John's lips had quirked up in an amused little smile as he licked his lips and shook his head exasperatedly, as if reminding himself that Sherlock could joke about the worst possible things at the worst possible time and he had to be ready for it. Sherlock shifted very slightly in his seat.

He wanted to give John a little smile, God he wanted to. It had been so long since he had been like this with John. But seeing as the situation was getting a little too light-hearted to his liking, Sherlock cleared his throat curtly and focused his attention back on the monitor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw John return to sobriety. Sherlock's insides gave a sickly swirl at that.

"So, Soo Lin took the pen," John looked like he was thinking hard. Sherlock let himself slip back into much less pleasant thoughts.

It could've been much simpler, Sherlock argued with himself. If Jim wanted Powers only to die and to not create an impact on people, he could've done it in so many ways. Why do something complicated, so complicated that Sherlock had to think it over and over again? How he did it wasn't as important as why he did it. Sherlock was sure that he would find how in a matter of time, but if the motive, if the endgame was Powers' death. . .

Or was the endgame Powers' death at all?

Sherlock couldn't understand it for the first time. Of all the things that could've confused him, why this? It was like every action that he contemplated was Powers' death and each was less likely than the next. Why did Jim do this? Why did he kill Powers? Or did he? Was he just claiming the blame and playing with Sherlock's head?

Sherlock shook himself mentally. There was no doubt to that. Jim Moriarty had himself confessed that he had killed Powers. Twice.

Or. . . was he just playing with Sherlock, playing and preying upon his mind? Was it a bluff? Or a double bluff? Or a triple bluff? Was he claiming something that he didn't do, but said so just because. . .

Sherlock swallowed. No, he was the only one who was right here. He was almost always right. No one was fooling him. No one could fool him, not with this.

But Moriarty was clever, Sherlock had seen for himself, in everyday in all the classes he shared with him. Cleverer than him, in fact, he thought begrudgingly. Even he couldn't have pulled off a murder so convincingly, even with all his knowledge. If he were to murder Powers, he would. . .

Sherlock blinked as his unfocused eyes tried to come back to the edge. Did he just. . . think about. . . that?

He glanced at John, just to ease himself out of this confusion. John, trying, still trying, still helping and keeping aside their differences in a way Sherlock could never. His eyes, a peculiar, marvellous translucent that Sherlock had never seen, John's eyes focussed on the jittery vein rising from inside the flesh of the index finger of Sherlock's right hand quivering on the mouse. Sherlock prided himself on his talent of seeing things that others missed. John, even when Sherlock sometimes tried to conceal, saw through the smallest, the most obscene of details about him. Things that even Sherlock didn't know about himself.

What would John say if he heard him thinking of things like that?

Sherlock could hear John clearing his throat and beginning to say something that he couldn't hear, pointing at the screen, pointing at that Asian girl, Soo Lin, maybe telling him something about her. A rectangle of skin was exposed between his hair and the collar of his shirt. Sherlock could remember the scent of his neck. Still.

He wasn't going to be drawn into this. He wasn't going to be manipulated into Moriarty's sick games. He was cleverer. He was right.

"Do you. . ." John began, and Sherlock was all attention again, "think that. . . that pen could be the. . . thing that killed Powers?"

There. John didn't believe him. There was the faintest trace of incredulity in his tone, nonetheless it was there. Why would he believe him, after all? Sherlock didn't believe himself, didn't believe that he was the one entertaining such an improbable possibility. If he told Molly this, even she won't believe him. She'd probably laugh at him the way she's laughed at him when he'd showed up with that compact car of his in front of her house.

He wondered if she would do that. She had proven him spectacularly wrong in times like these.

"This is not CSI or Miss Marple," Sherlock snapped, despite himself. "This is real world, John."

He felt a bitter twinge of guilt. John had apologized for the previous evening. If he were in John's place, he would've expected forgiveness of some sort. Sherlock closed his eyes. He was angry, angry at John. For what, he couldn't remember. All he knew was that he wanted to be angrier, so angry that it consumed and displaced the pain completely. His brother always told him never to let himself be consumed by sentiment. He tried, he really did. But there just wasn't any other prescription for the pain.

"Excuse me," he cleared his throat quietly as John winced a little at the bitterness, "I apologize for that."

"Since when did _you_ become oh-so-formal?" John asked.

Sherlock chose not reply to that. It was hard, doing this, ignoring and pretending. He wanted to take all the lies apart. He hated himself for thinking of even hurting John; it made his gut twist sickeningly that the only person in the whole university who was worth having a shred of dignity for was the person he was treating like this.

"So. . ." John began, and Sherlock gritted his teeth again, "the pen. . . why're you so worried about the pen? Is that something. . . is it a sort of a, like a concealable weapon like they show in James Bond?"

"James who?"

There was an awkward beat, after which John's clearly incredulous voice came out, "Oh, never mind. What about this pen though?"

"Only Soo Lin can tell us," Sherlock spoke, his mind automatically travelling to Jim, his words, to Soo Lin, what could be there about her. He could sense John beside. He was thinking, he could tell by the pink tongue flicking out to lick his bottom lip. Sherlock gulped, his throat too dry, his mouth too damn wet.

"Listen. . . um, I. . . by chance caught some. . . snippets of conversation today," John began and Sherlock turned to him, listening attentively and wondering if it might have some bearing on the case because John was bringing it up now, "between you . . ."

Sherlock waited, barely daring to breathe.

". . . and Mr. Moriarty."

By now, John was watching him carefully and Sherlock looked up to stare into his now-translucent eyes that had always watched him. Sherlock felt exposed, incriminated. He had thought that John might not bring it up with all the distraction that there was already. Sherlock's heart beat in his chest like a prey's at the thought that had John been one second late, Jim would've seen, seen Sherlock's eyes and known all about the two of them, what they had had, had done once upon a time. Something that shouldn't matter anymore, but it did, nonetheless.

No, Sherlock strictly told himself, it was over. John only pitied him, perhaps. That's why he said those things. He didn't care about Sherlock. But he would care if Holmes was affected, because after all, Holmes was his best student, wasn't he? Sherlock was just someone, someone John would rather stay away from.

He willed himself to look unaffected. He didn't want to let John into this. But not because John couldn't take it. He could take anything that Sherlock threw at him. He had tested that most thoroughly earlier during the initial months of their acquaintance. John had proved to be seriously stubborn and tolerant of everything about him. But something told him that John wouldn't be tolerant of this side of him.

When Sherlock didn't speak ahead, John spoke further, "I would want you to tell me if there's something more about this. . . Powers affair that you know of, as a teacher."

"I don't think you have any right over me, professor," Sherlock replied sternly, "seeing as we're _done_ , your words, not mine."

"Mr. Holmes, this is not that," John spoke unaffectedly, with only a rise in the pitch of his voice. "Don't make this about _that_. I have a responsibility to you. I—"

John was cut off the sound of Sherlock faux-yawning widely. Seeing as John had stopped, Sherlock continued, "No, it's okay, keep talking. I always yawn when I'm interested."

John let out a defeated exhale, "I didn't mean it like that. You're an adult, and it's true that I don't have any right over you. But I saw you today with. . . Moriarty, Sherlock, you looked. . ." he trailed off.

"Oh, this is good," Sherlock nodded, bile and resentment suddenly coming up and overwhelming him so much that he couldn't suppress the sentiments cascading into a mess in him, "nice game, clever game. You act to be oh-so-concerned about me after everything, after _yesterday_. I like it."

"What do you want me to say, then?" John demanded, his voice pitching higher with every word at Sherlock's unreasonableness. "Why do you always do this, make everything out as a game? I'm concerned about you, _I'm_ playing a game! I wanted you here, _I'm_ still the one playing a game!"

Sherlock looked away, feeling the corner of his lip twitching. He didn't mean such things, he didn't want to say them to John but he couldn't help it. Sometimes, he wondered if he really was a game for John.

"Want _ed_?" Sherlock echoed, watching the glass cabinet, watching John's troubled reflection in it.

"Look," John looked a little peeved out of his outburst, "I'm just. . . concerned because he said that he. . ." he looked down, as if barely able to believe what was going to come out of his mouth next. Whatever little colour Sherlock had gained in his complexion out of sentiment drained away. He gazed at John, waiting, his expression deadpanned.

"That he. . . killed Powers, and that's. . . clearly not a good influence on you," he finished lamely, looking steadily at him. Sherlock couldn't believe it. John was still looking up to him, at him, to tell him what to do. Sometimes, it was too much.

"Sherlock? Is it true?" John, who always hated lying but had to, whose mouth twitched slightly when he lied, so he hid it by running his tongue against his lower lip, looked remarkably steady for a man who just came to know that he had heard another man confessing about killing a someone.

Sherlock did not know what to say. The answer was easy, but what did he want John to believe? What did he want himself to believe? Such things made words infinitely difficult for him. He couldn't deny that he didn't loathe it. He wasn't the sort who lied to themselves. If he was not chasing something, pushing his intellect, then it was silence in his head. Arguably, this was much more desirable.

"I don't know," he replied instead, and John blinked, looking like he wasn't used to that coming from Sherlock's mouth, "I can't know everything," he added after some thought.

"You must," John insisted. "He told you. Don't you believe it?"

"He could've been lying."

"Why would he lie?"

He could lie, but he had reason to suspect that Jim was a far more better player. Jim _was_ capable. How simple it seemed for him. And if Jim was capable of killing a human being, he could be capable of anything.

No, Sherlock believed he could take it all on his own. He was clever. He could be careful. He never made mistakes.

He tried not to look at his left forearm. Although in his defence, he could've quit drugs any time he wanted to. He just didn't want to do so.

"He's showing off," he replied blandly. That was partly true anyway. If Jim really wanted Powers' death, he wouldn't want anyone to know about it. That was clearly not the case; he was practically gleaming with a twisted sort of glee, not out of Powers' absence because of his death, but because of something else. Like out of repeatedly telling Sherlock, telling him that he could let him know how he had killed Powers.

Like out of tempting Sherlock.

Why was he showing off? Would it get him what he wanted? Sherlock couldn't see how.

" _Showing_ _off_?" John repeated disbelievingly, his mouth hanging open, "does he want to be caught? He would have to be mad."

He probably is, Sherlock thought wryly.

"Maybe he likes playing games, the chase, the risk," Sherlock smirked, crossing his right leg over his left and steepling his fingers under his chin. John blinked twice and cleared his throat. He clearly looked uncomfortable.

"Oh right. Games." John nodded. Sherlock noted the tone of his voice but didn't say anything. "Right," he cleared his throat, "good. Sporty fella, I s'pose."

Sherlock glanced at him. John was still finding it hard to believe, but Sherlock, Sherlock alone had seen that side to Jim. And maybe Soo Lin too. Everybody else just saw the little working-class parents' boy on scholarship, big brains, talent, brilliant, sweet and dumb. Jim from Math; _give him a candy and a beer can, he'll return it to you threefold_ sort of guy.

John had had only a glimpse of it. Of course he would find it hard to believe. After all, how old was Jim? Twenty, twenty-one at the most? Sherlock wanted to reassure John, take all the misgivings away from him. He wanted to tell John that there was nothing wrong. That these were small stupid occurrings, nothing else, nothing to be worried about, even if the truth was just the opposite. He sucked in a breath, wanting to tell him all the lies that might soothe him, but the words didn't come out.

"Got any theory?" John asked him out of the blue. Sherlock snapped out of his reverie.

"Sorry, what?"

"How. . . Moriarty executed this. . . whole drama?"

Sherlock turned to him. "Are you _so_ sure that Moriarty did it?"

"I don't know. . ."

"Go on," Sherlock said, watching him cautiously, "try. For me."

John buried his head in his chest, "Moriarty is an intelligent student. He'll think twice before destroying his own life for something he didn't do. . ."

Sherlock wanted to laugh at that. Moriarty was least bothered about his own life, he could tell that much.

"But," John continued, "what do you think?"

John. He still depended on him, for answers, for guidance. Sherlock didn't know what to make of it. He was supposed to be his mentor.

"Again, only Soo Lin could tell us."

Sherlock glanced at him and looked away resolutely after the minutes of torturous silence. John was watching him too. He stared at the door almost desperately. He was frankly surprised that John hadn't thrown him out of his office yet. He was even more surprised that John had even talked about them. Sherlock didn't know if he could find it in himself to forgive John. He wasn't that strong. That was more of John's area of expertise.

"Sherlock?" This time, John's voice was stronger, more resolute. Sherlock didn't bother to acknowledge, didn't want to acknowledge because he might give something away of himself that John might not want.

"I," he looked like he chose his words with care, and Sherlock couldn't keep his eyes off him, off his reflection in the glass cabinet, "I am sorry."

Sherlock blinked and managed in the most blandest of voices, "Don't be. You'll make it a habit."

John gave a strained, high-pitched chuckle at that, a sound that was mostly choked. Sherlock couldn't help noticing that.

"Do you. . ." John looked down at his lap and eyed Sherlock under lowered lashes, almost like a gazelle. Sherlock's heart sped up gracelessly, "want to. . . ?"

Sherlock looked down at John's smaller hand resting on the armrest of his chair, wanting to rest his own palm on top of his. The question was out of the situation, completely misplaced. One moment, they were talking about what happened to Powers whereas it was just an excuse to skirt around where they had left off.

He glanced at John's lips and gulped, "Yes. I need to know what sort of hold Moriarty has on Soo Lin."

He knew John was going to say something else. The disappointment that John thought he hid very well told him that. But for the sake of relieving the tension for something that was now far-fetched, he straightened up in his chair and began to speak.

"I am assuming that somehow, Soo Lin was forced to do this. How, I can find it out from her later. I'll need you to—"

Sherlock stopped abruptly as he thought further. Would John say yes? Would he follow through this?

But John just blinked, a subtle frown line dancing over his eyes, "Need me to what?"

Sherlock blew out a breath, "She's got mathematics as a subject, she was in Powers' class; I can safely assume that she's a science undergrad. You know her, means she's got a class with you, am I wrong?"

"First year, yes," John nodded. "A foreign student is always hard to miss."

"Good. You hold her back after class and text me five to ten minutes before class ends with the room number. I'll deal with her the rest."

John edged away from him, scratching the back of his head, "Oh, right. Yes. Anything else you want me to—?"

"No." Sherlock declared brusquely, trying and failing to sound dismissive, "that's all."

"No it's not," John insisted, "why're you doing this?"

Sherlock looked directly at him, "Doing what?"

"Bothering yourself with. . . _this_? Look, I'm not saying that what you're doing is wrong. My question is why."

Sherlock frowned. "What's your real question?"

"What will you get out of this? All this. . . petty. . . detective work?"

"Peace of mind," he said with a smirk, like John had once said all those months ago. John gulped at the reminiscence, his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat invitingly. Sherlock forced his eyes away. He could tell that John unknowingly twisted every statement from Sherlock as a innuendo that somehow suggested that it was all John's fault; that it was because of him that Sherlock needed a reprieve from feeling anything at all, that it was because of him that he needed peace of mind. Sherlock couldn't blame him for it.

"It's," John glanced at his watch after five more minutes of complete silence, "almost six now. Ms. Hooper must be waiting for you."

Sherlock's heart jumped to his throat when he noted how reluctant John sounded. He wanted to tell John that Molly had plans with Jim, that he could stay with John as long as he wanted to, and that John only needed to say it and he'd never leave.

"Yes," Sherlock nodded stiffly. He didn't trust himself in John's presence, "I must be off."

With that, he removed the drive smoothly. Because smoothly was all he could manage right now. He could feel John's eyes on him as he rose and patted the pocket in which he kept the pen drive, "Good evening, professor."

John rose too, and Sherlock stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do with his arms. He looked away and started towards the door when he was accosted by John's voice again.

"You didn't destroy my life, Sherlock," John said, tucking his arms behind his back, "just thought. . . you should know."

Sherlock stared at him for a beat, the curve of his lip. He wanted to trace over it with his tongue. Without a word, he opened the door and left, listening to the door closing behind him with a unsatisfying _click_.

As soon as he got out of PG Sciences, he fished out a cigarette and lit it, puffing out denser fumes than usual. Somehow, it seemed to soothe his frayed nerves.

 

* * *

 

It was six thirty by the time Sherlock arrived at Baker Street and found out that his brother was sitting in his favourite chair again. Sherlock had half-a-mind to leave and never come back, but then he wasn't the one to ignore his brother ever. Grumbling to himself, he climbed the steps to his flat till he was greeted by the sight of his brother smiling humourlessly at him.

"I take it that the tryst with your charming professor didn't go well," said he, with no trace of the usual mirth in his voice. Sherlock hated this, that it had to happen in front of his detached, disdainful older brother was all the more humiliating. It simply added insult to injury. Before this, Sherlock had never had something called a "love life", let alone such a bleak one; the fact that he could hear the stern tapping of his umbrella on the floorboard, right where he and John had first made love was tearing him to pieces.

"Why are you here?" He asked him bluntly.

"To remind you one last time that I will _not_ clean up after you like in Sixth Form," Mycroft said in a tetchy voice, abandoning all made-up humour at Sherlock's on-the-edge composure, "I did warn you, but did you listen?"

"John is none of your business," he snapped, "I will deal with him."

"I didn't see that happening yesterday."

Sherlock tried not to falter. As much as it pained to admit, his brother was right. He didn't know what he would've done had he seen John like that yesterday. He would have to be forced to take legal action against him. He didn't understand what John wanted from him. Even after what he had said today in his office—that he couldn't have Sherlock to go away—it still wasn't enough to be going on with.

No, he reminded himself, John wanted to apologise. He apologised. John only pitied him for being so weak to not be able to take that night back for anything.

"Aren't you supposed to be working overtime? What with the coup in Uganda or someplace?" Sherlock reminded him as he set down his bookbag and kicked away his sneakers in different directions of the room. Mycroft tutted at that.

"I'm surprised you were paying attention to my "pratting" as you very inaccurately word it, Sherlock. But I am not here to discuss about the political stabilities of various nation-states. I'm here to talk about what I avoided last night."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes as he settled down in the chair across Mycroft, "Although I did sense some newborn hesitation in you last night, I hadn't known that you could even _avoid_ things."

The corner of Mycroft's lips twitched as he crossed his legs and focused the full glare of his gaze on Sherlock. Sherlock belatedly realised that he was sitting in the armchair facing the window, which would enable his brother to see the most subtle of expressions on his face even through the stony facade.

"Why were you gone to a morgue yesterday?"

Sherlock sucked in a breath. He had expected something worse, this was still in the land of tame, "Relax, I went with Molly—"

"Why?" Mycroft insisted.

"Why're you so worried?" Sherlock countered petulantly, "I'm still clean, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are. You've outshone my expectations, in fact."

"I'm flattered to hear that," Sherlock remarked wryly and Mycroft sighed.

"Does your. . . professor boyfriend know that you did. . . ?" he trailed off, his face stony. It still irked him. Mycroft still thought himself responsible for Sherlock getting his first cigarette from him, and not long later, for having approached the men in dark coats in the park after twilight and holding on to what he bought that day for years.

"He's not my boyfriend," Sherlock clarified, as if to remind himself, "it was not a. . . recurring. . . thing."

Sherlock gazed at his brother. It would have been satisfying. even if it was hypocritical of him to think so, to see Mycroft show any emotion, even anger. The blankness in his face was infuriating, to say the least.

"Then, what was that charade with waiting for a date for three weeks—"

"—nineteen days—" Sherlock corrected automatically.

"—Three weeks," Mycroft insisted, "for?"

Sherlock came to an abrupt stop in his tracks. He had forgotten just how far he and John had come from there. All the flirting and the courting and being cool and likeable so that John liked him, it seemed so stupid now.

When Sherlock didn't reply, Mycroft continued, "I think that his usefulness has run its course. He was a good distraction from the drugs. But the more you get into this. . . unrequited love for your professor, the more you'll feel the need to. . . indulge again. That's why you went to the morgue, isn't it? Craving the distraction from—"

Sherlock snapped his neck up at him, " _What_?!"

Mycroft observed him and scoffed in response, "Why else would one get entangled with a professor of all people?"

Sherlock finally understood exactly what he was implying and felt himself colouring, if only slightly, "We did not have a meaningless affair. We slept only once."

Mycroft looked vaguely surprised, "But that was your intention from the very beginning, wasn't it? After all, sex too is considered to be a drug."

Sherlock shifted in his armchair, trying not to pay heed to the implied _addict_ in all of Mycroft's words, "I don't think I have any obligation to explain myself to you. And I believe this is not what you came to talk about, is it?"

"I'm merely concerned about you," Mycroft said simply It was his safe word—or rather safe-sentence—when he saw his conversation with Sherlock going downhill, "nothing good can come out of pursuing a man who wants nothing more than to forget you."

The words sent a shard of ice through Sherlock. He simply tried to blink the hurt out of his eyes, but he knew that Mycroft had seen.

"He didn't mean it, all of that," Sherlock gritted through clenched teeth. That wasn't really true anyway; John had said that himself. He did mean some of it.

"The words may hurt," Mycroft admonished, "but it's the truth, brother dear. I'm not known for expressing my ideas creatively."

"On the contrary," Sherlock retorted, "you are very well known for being extremely mealy-mouthed about everything."

Mycroft smiled snappily, "I can hardly contain my blushes. Now, are you going to tell me about your little morgue trip?"

Sherlock huffed, "It was nothing bad, I assure you."

"I left the office early for this, Sherlock. Don't be difficult."

"I am difficult, I always _am_ difficult. Isn't that what you told Mummy whenever she asked you to babysit me?"

Mycroft made a noncommittal noise, "Sherlock, be serious about this!"

"I am serious. I'm not a child, I suggest you stop treating me like one."

"I don't see why you're being so. . . defensive about this," Mycroft frowned and Sherlock unfolded his arms accordingly. "It was a simple question."

"You came here, all the way to Baker Street to ask me a _simple_ _question_ ," he scoffed, "I hardly believe it."

"It's hardly a coincidence that you went to a morgue almost a week after a boy died of sudden cardiac arrest in the university campus—"

"I don't see what's wrong with going to a morgue," Sherlock pointed out, "I like dead bodies."

"And you wonder why you're a recluse," Mycroft scoffed, but Sherlock overrode him.

"My isolation is self-imposed and I stand out for my intelligence, which is never a bad thing."

"Intelligence?" Mycroft sniggered ungainly, "What is so intelligent about going after a straight man ten years older than you, and who is kind enough to bang on your door drunk with a colourful assortment of insults for you?"

Sherlock bit back an irritated snarl, "I am very. . . moved that you were so worried about _my_ life."

"Stop being ridiculous. . . At any rate, all I can tell you is to be careful," Mycroft said, and Sherlock wondered for an obtuse moment if Mycroft knew anything, anything at all about Jim Moriarty and if his warnings were in that direction. Usually he preferred being alone, but this, this was dangerous territory. Even after more than three months, he knew virtually nothing about Jim Moriarty whereas the boy looked at Sherlock like he knew everything about him. He made Sherlock feel naked.

It would be comforting to know that he had a confidante by his side. John was out of question, and Molly was slowly turning towards Jim. Sherlock hadn't felt this alone since a long time.

"About what?" Sherlock enquired, "university is full of idiots. I don't need to be. . . careful."

"I'm just passing you news about what I've heard. And no, it's not about your little professor or your friend Molly. This is bigger. . . In any case you need to be escorted out of the campus safely," Mycroft dug into his pocket and produced a slip of paper, "here's my driver's number. Don't make yourself more of a target than you already are, Sherlock. You might be offending—"

"I don't offend people all the time," Sherlock declared, and Mycroft gave a short laugh, "and what the hell are you talking about? I'm a good driver."

"I'm just talking about history repeating itself, Sherlock," Mycroft rose with a definite ring of finality in his voice. Sherlock simply observed him, "I'm just asking you to take precautions; I'm not sure about it. . . but then, I never am."

"And you insist that I am the one who's dramatic. _History repeating itself_ ," he imitated Mycroft's self-important manner and Mycroft rolled his eyes.

"Goodnight, Sherlock," Mycroft cleared his throat. "Listen to me for once and don't go on offending Powers' grieving family, not after what happened."

Sherlock committed that piece of advice to his mind, trying not to dwell on it. He was always clever enough to avoid anything that came his way. At any rate, even though Mycroft was never wrong, he did have a fanciful way of putting the smallest of things.

As Mycroft turned and lingered in the arch before where the last line of vision between them would be absolutely eliminated, Sherlock reached out for his brother. In dire need, he knew he could turn to Mycroft, approach him without any restrains.

"Mycroft!" he sprang out of his armchair and rushed towards the doorway. He heard the fading of footsteps. He knew that Mycroft had sensed that Sherlock had something else to say to him.

"What?"

This time, Sherlock didn't hesitate. He was just a classmate, however creepy and insane and delusional and. . . Sherlock stopped thinking further. He knew his brother probably wouldn't know but, "Does the name Jim Moriarty ring a bell?"

Sherlock watched in dismay as Mycroft looked blank, "Is this a way to _ask_ me to check about him? Because I will not—"

"No," Sherlock shook his head, feeling his stomach swoop at the knowledge that Moriarty was clever enough to have escaped the eagle-like gaze of his omniscient, all-powerful brother, however lame that sounded like, "I'm just asking you whether you know someone by the name of Jim Moriarty."

Mycroft shifted to his feet, "No. . . But if it _is_ serious, I can—"

"Yes please," Sherlock found himself on the verge of pleading. Jim Moriarty was such a big question mark in his life that he wanted to pick up a duster and rub at it as passionately as he could.

Mycroft sighed, "I'd like to remind you that not all my services are at your disposal, Sherlock. I will not check a random man's name based on your whims."

"It's not a whim. I merely need to know."

"Is he bullying you?" Mycroft asked him, "Because if he is, I'm sure we can file a complaint against him."

Sherlock laughed inwardly. Something deep inside him told him that Jim's foolproof methods were well above the line of law.

"I assure you I can take care of myself, Mycroft. I am twenty years old."

Mycroft's stare was hard and grounding, and Sherlock barely managed to meet it before his brother smirked and took off promptly. Sherlock closed the door behind him with a thud of the door. Mrs. Hudson was gone to her sister's, so there was no interference of food and other human-ish things from her.

He looked at himself in the mantelpiece mirror. He hadn't looked at his reflection in ages. He never really bothered to. He simply wondered how far he had come from September 2014 to February 2015.

He shook his head as his eye caught sight of the click ball point pen he had bought to recreate the murder weapon.

Time to work.

He checked on the internet, understanding the principle behind click pens while the back of his mind about why Jim would go to such lengths, make a pen that could kill only Powers. Something didn't make sense. Sherlock did not know much about him, but one thing that he realised was that he wanted to be distracted too.

Why was he doing this? Why couldn't he think of what Jim Moriarty would think like? What would Moriarty do? Surely insure himself first. But how? If Sherlock found it out, he was sure to be expelled and incarcerated.

His phone buzzed. Sherlock turned to it.

_**You're so innocent, you know JM** _

Sherlock gritted his teeth, wondering if Moriarty could long-distance read his mind at this point.

_**Oh, such a little virgin JM** _

Sherlock decided to ignore him, even though his fingers itched to send reply. He always replied to everything but he wanted to make sure that Moriarty didn't get the satisfaction of the reply.

_**Unresponsive one, aren't you? JM** _

_**Are you? JM** _

Sherlock decided to switch his phone off and concentrate on what he was doing. Jim was willing to give him clues, playing Good Samaritan to him. Maybe there was something that insured the fact that Jim wouldn't get caught, no matter what. There must be some detail.

Some detail Sherlock couldn't deduce.

He plugged in the flash drive and played the clip again, hoping to see something that he had missed, something that he could use against Jim and push him away from his and John's and Molly's lives. It couldn't be this easy. Jim was intelligent. There was nothing intelligent in putting in manual labour to make a pen like that. It wouldn't be fun, it would be labouring like a donkey, if he wanted to think like Jim. Sherlock had worked out the mechanism of it, how the ink reservoir fitted with a needle and mixed with the antiserum could make the injection into Powers' thumb with the help of the retracting springs; Sherlock had figured out the physics of it.

But he knew that that was not what had happened. Because that wasn't clever. Moriarty behaved like the whole thing was a big circus for him. What fun would it give anyone to do that, to put in such effort and then watch the show being unfolded easily?

There was more.

He glanced at his phone. He could literally feel invisible hands trying to drag him to the phone, switch it on, read all of Jim's messages and reply to every single of them. He wished he could see John at this point. He wished he had his solid presence to depend on. If only he had him, Moriarty wouldn't matter.

After fifteen minutes of fooling himself, Sherlock gave up and switched on his phone. Instantly, he was accosted by the banner:

_**You have 26 new messages.** _

Frowning, his heart thundering in his chest, he navigated to his inbox, expecting something like a bomb blast right in his face.

_**Love your wig, by the way JM** _

_**What is it made of? JM** _

_**Are you still crying over Carl? JM** _

_**Yelling at dear Molly for being with me? JM** _

_**She's adorable. Squeaky little mouse. But so irritating. And so clingy JM** _

_**What might you be doing now, Sherlock? JM** _

_**Aren't you going to give me a clue? JM** _

_**Not shagging someone, are you? JM** _

_**This might be the last shag of their lives JM** _

_**Then again, you're a virgin. You reek of virgin. . . but not the virgin you're thinking of JM** _

_**Having a shower? At this time of night, right before going to bed? JM** _

_**I can just imagine you in a steamy shower JM** _

_**Not to bed then? To solve Powers puzzle, then? JM** _

_**Gosh, just admit that you don't know. It's a lot less effort JM** _

_**Stop ignoring me like ordinary people JM** _

_**This flirting is becoming boring now JM** _

_**Oh, just admit that you like bad boys JM** _

_**Bad boys just like me? Oh, the way you look at me makes me want to. . . JM** _

_**Even you're a bad boy, Sherlock, aren't you? Maybe not a virgin after all JM** _

_**Can you prove it then, that I killed Powers? JM** _

_**Look there, I said it! Show it to your mouse, let's see what she thinks JM** _

_**Even if you're not going to do that JM** _

_**Very naughty. Very, very naughty. Tell me you're getting this and I won't be disappointed in you at all JM** _

_**Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you. . . isn't that Celine Dion screaming? JM** _

_**Raining, pouring. Sherlock is boring. JM** _

Sherlock stared at his mobile phone incredulously, palms sweating, head swimming. Jim's messages just abruptly stopped, even before Sherlock could reply. Soon, another text came.

_**Figure it out, and please Daddy. JM** _

Sherlock told himself that he wasn't doing this for Jim, he was doing this because he wanted to. Because he wanted to prove to himself that he was always right. Always. That one simple rejection couldn't derail him. That it wasn't enough to prove him wrong about something that he had let himself believe for months.

Even if he knew that that was not the case.

 

* * *

 

"Glad you could join me!"

Sherlock turned around at that high-pitched, bordering-on-comical Irish voice. Sherlock sometimes thought of Jim like those clowns in the horror movies that Molly had once made him watch without his will.

"The pleasure is all mine," Sherlock drawled sarcastically, as Jim entered the classroom and locked the door behind him. Sherlock did not protest to that. He wanted this interaction to be as brief and to the point as possible.

"Oh, how you flatter me, Sherlock," Jim smirked and plopped down on a desk beside him, swinging his legs to-and-fro almost like a pendulum, "That's why you're so precious."

"Am I?" Sherlock remarked wryly, raising an eyebrow, "That's not something I get to hear every day."

"Oh you are, Sherlock! You just don't know how much. Thank goodness no one seems to think so. I'd kill every person who thought that, love," Jim turned to him, eyeing from up to down. Where there should have been desire, there was nothing but blank brownness of his dark eyes. Sherlock met his gaze carefully.

"I will talk to Soo Lin one of these days, y'know," Sherlock said, changing the subject before it got to creepy for his liking, and that was saying a lot, "Don't kill her before I get the opportunity."

Jim gave a manic peal of high-pitched laughter, "For you, Sherlock. I was going to do it, but since you have requested me, I won't. I can tell, you've figured it out, haven't you? Haven't you, Sherlock dearie?! I can tell that you have!"

"Yes," Sherlock dug into his pockets and produced a click pen. Jim's eyes widened.

"Very good, Sherlock," he said appraisingly, "very, very good. You can talk."

"Yes, I can. The modern miracle of man, talking," Sherlock huffed.

Jim giggled, patting his thigh. His dark eyes shone menacingly. He could've been laughing at some physicist joke, "Oh, your sense of humour, Sherlock. So much like mine. You trick me, I trick you. You make me laugh, I make you laugh too. See, we're made for each other, you and me. You're finally beginning to see sense."

"If not anything," Sherlock replied dryly, " _You always want things to be clever_. Nice way to convey it to me, through the first letter of each of your. . . moving texts from last night."

"Wasn't it? _Wasn't it?_ Thought you'd appreciate the joke. God, I can live without porn the next month if you keep me on my toes like this."

"Oh really?" Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Am I that. . . _entertaining_?"

"Yes, and as an exercise," Sherlock tried not to edge away as Jim leaned in closer into him, "Prove to me that Soo Lin did it. Interesting, won't that be? Little Asian girl crying it all out? Bring her tears for me, please, will you Sherlock? I know you will! Such a good boy for Daddy."

"Surely I can ask you for a little bit of favour from you, in exchange for what I'm going to do for you?" Sherlock rose. The proximity with Moriarty was unbearable.

"Oh dear Lord," Jim shook his head, yawning widely, "not the give-and-take again? Sherlock, that's not how we work. I give, you take, at least at the moment. You're too innocent to _give_ me."

"Oh, I think you'll find this far from innocent," Sherlock said, fretting around the classroom, checking his watch slyly. He could have recorded this into a Dictaphone, but he wasn't the one to play dirty. If Moriarty hadn't broken the rules of engagement, he wasn't going to lower himself to that level by doing that.

"Oh, I'm so excited," he flung his arms around like a gorilla, pitching his voice deeper as he chanted, "Sherlock is far from innocent. I'm so excited."

"Why did you kill Powers? At all?"

At this, Jim abruptly stopped acting like a gorilla and looked around at Sherlock lividly. Before Sherlock was allowed a chance to even expect what was going to happen, Moriarty had pushed him against the wall with both his arms, pressed his body flush against him. Sherlock gulped and tried to get his breath back as Jim gritted his teeth, showing sparkling white teeth, extra-sharp canines. In one second, Jim Moriarty had gone from rollicking to a depraved maniac.

"Because!" he barked every single word into Sherlock's ears. Sherlock didn't try to struggle, because it was fruitless, "I! Like! To! Watch! You! Dance! You! Moron!"

And then, he let go of Sherlock, looking like he was going to spit on his face. Sherlock's knees felt wobbly, his entire frame shivered as his cold surroundings sped up to greet him when Jim Moriarty lost contact with his body. He didn't gain control of his brain until Jim Moriarty had walked out of the door.

He believed he had been successful at tricking Jim Moriarty. That was the only relief he got. Even though it really wasn't relief, something like frustration, that he had to make Jim think that he was less than what Jim had thought of him to be. That even after Jim had given him the clue via the texts, he had still misinterpreted it and he didn't want Jim to think _that_ of him.

The one thing he didn't understand was why Jim didn't give in to anger of having been disappointed at Sherlock for not following his clues. Just like he had done moments ago. Jim Moriarty did not have any control over his anger, that's the only weakness Sherlock had found out.

Maybe he was just very fond of playing with Sherlock's mind. Maybe he wanted to see Sherlock failing spectacularly. Well, that wasn't happening. He knew what Jim had really done, and Jim didn't know that he knew.

 

* * *

 

It was after three days that John's text finally arrived.

_**Class leaves in 5. Lab B-3.** _

Sherlock wanted to fool himself into thinking that this was an invitation to come meet John after class for a tryst. It would seem similarly to any other person. He knew what it really was.

_**Be there in 5. SH** _

He twirled his phone around his fingers, cradling it in his palms as if it were something precious. It was the only entity which faithfully contained the only bits and links with John that he had now: old texts, phone calls in the call log, a lone photo of them during _Technoholics_. Somehow, something as insignificant as taking photos started to mean a lot to Sherlock. He could now understand why people kept taking selfies and pictures all the time and captured them in their cameras to stay on their SD cards as long as one cared to care for them.

That day, Sherlock had said that people tended to miss out on their actual lives while spending precious time clicking photos away, that was what he had said on that occasion, when John had been telling him about a particularly stupid group of girls who took selfies instead of lunch during the recess.

John had made sure that Sherlock took a photo of themselves, for once not caring that he was a professor in the university. Sherlock's professor.

Perhaps as a reminder of the day when they were just two men, one straight and the other to whom sexuality didn't matter at all as long as he had someone. Two men, eight years apart, sitting alone together, tired of the fighting and the singing and the dancing. Just engaging in banter like mates did.

There were only so many good times, and once they went away, pictures were all that could serve one to remind them of only some of those moments.

The corner of his lips twitched downwards as he gazed at the image in his phone under his desk, his eyes darting sideways for Molly's line of sight. The last thing he needed was for Molly's comfort, or worse, her seeking comfort in Jim by telling him about Sherlock and John. He still gave an involuntary shudder when he thought of what Jim had said that day. He shook his thoughts away and concentrated on John.

His ran his eyes over John's relaxed figure, over the slight brush of their shoulders against each other, over his face sans the retro nerd glasses, and himself beside him, Sherlock's arms tucked behind his back, back straight in attention and a little frown crease marring his forehead, Sherlock's face still serious as if he carried a weight beyond his years and yet somehow so young and carefree, even if it was only months before. At that moment, he had been only glad that the photo session had at least let him stand close to John than the other man ever let him.

No other text came from John. Sherlock tried not to feel disappointed. He tried not to think that John was playing hard to get. John wasn't playing at all. He was merely trying, trying for a bit of normality between them, nothing more.

And Sherlock wasn't acquiescent to that.

 

* * *

 

Above the tops of the heads that exited his lecture room, John's heart beat a little faster than usual when he saw Sherlock's dishevelled dark auburn head poking over them and approaching his class. John readied himself. He had to do his best. He couldn't let Sherlock down. With a strange calm that adrenaline usually brought over him, he cleared his throat and called out a little louder than usual, "Miss Yao? Could I talk to you for a minute please, about your assignment?"

Soo Lin turned towards him and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "My assignment?"

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Sherlock approach the table, and trying his best to maintain his professor face, he nodded her to the desk in front of her chair. He warned with his eyes for Sherlock to not launch into a monologue and scare the girl off. Soo Lin followed his eyes and found Sherlock watching her with a calculating expression, as if trying to judge from the state if her shoes or her skirt alone what kind of leverage Moriarty had on her to make her do it.

Before John could start, Sherlock grabbed a latex glove from a tray and extended his gloved palm to her, approaching her slowly, silkily, stalking like a cat, "D'you have the medication now?"

John's mind skidded to a halt. What happened to the pen?

"What?!" She looked like an idea crossed her mind, and before she could take a single step, Sherlock spoke.

"Don't even think of it," he warned her, "There's cameras in this room. You'll be disproved immediately."

A straight chill went to John's heart and his eyes darted to the camera. He didn't remember that. There were cameras in the room that were probably fixed after the Christmas holidays. Cameras that held the supposedly private moments between Sherlock and himself, the time he had asked Sherlock to find another place to study, the time Sherlock had asked him out, and the various times Sherlock had seduced John and almost kissed him. How could he, and moreover Sherlock have missed _that_?

"Medication?" Soo Lin's voice sounded a little cracked as she tried to sound incredulous, "What are you talking about?"

Nevertheless, John found his eyes locked on to Sherlock's. Sherlock's eyes rested on his face for a moment, before he tilted his head downward to glare at Soo Lin, pursing his lips, one arm still extended. This was the Sherlock he was used to, the Sherlock completely in charge. Smooth and confident, coming to business right away. John guiltily thought how he was a factor in having undone that during the last few weeks.

"The medication," Sherlock's voice was almost a growl, "please."

Soo Lin looked up at him, her full lips drawn into a thin tensed line as her large eyes grew worried and a little incredulous. "What medication? What are you talking about?"

Sherlock smirked, and John wondered for a small moment whether Sherlock could be wrong. Soo Lin did not look like she was bluffing.

He denied that possibility. Sherlock couldn't be wrong. No one could beat Sherlock.

"The medication you took from Carl Powers, obviously. The one you switched so that you could give him small soluble ordinary pills with the same colour and taste as his medication was. You killed him! You're clever enough to see through that this was a setup and not say anything against it. You'll be wasting your breath and your effort if you think you can get away by lying," Sherlock said. John could sense Sherlock losing his patience, but he thought it would be best if he didn't intervene. Sherlock now looked at him like he couldn't tolerate him at all anymore.

"I didn't kill anyone," she insisted and looked at John appealingly. John focussed his eyes on Sherlock. He kept in his mind who he was here for. "You're insane!"

"Says the one who's thrown in their league with Jim Moriarty," he scoffed.

Soo Lin turned to John, "I. . . don't understand, Professor . . . why're you taking his side. . . why're you letting him make such accusa—?"

"As a faculty of this university," John began as austerely as he could, "I have a duty to relieve a fellow student of his doubts. I might not be a police officer, Miss Yao, and while I do not have the authority to ask you such questions, if there indeed is some foul play afoot here, it is my duty to report the same to the Dean of Students for a more formal route of investigation."

He could feel Sherlock's wide eyes on him following his big-ass speech to Soo Lin. But he did have a duty, at least he made himself think so. As dubious as it was beginning to seem, if Powers was really killed, he ought to do something for it. What, he wasn't sure. Sherlock knew that.

"Beg your pardon, sir?" Soo Lin sounded a little peeved. John glanced at Sherlock for more input, for guidance, but Sherlock was only observing her as minutely as he could. He felt foolish. Was he right, trusting Sherlock, his infallible intellect this time, instead of his heart? Or did he make a mistake again?

"Sit down, and be comfortable," John insisted. He wanted to take Sherlock away from her and keep him isolated in the last bench so that he had some time to think, some time to relieve himself of the tension. But then, he'd have to touch Sherlock because Sherlock seemed to have completely phased out because of his indignation. And he wasn't sure if he could keep control of himself if he did that. Sherlock had given him an antagonistic taste of what being with him would truly be like, and while John craved that even though he didn't understand how he could want that, he had to keep his distance. It wasn't proper. It wasn't _right_.

But before John could take another step or make any sound, Sherlock smirked as if he had found the one key to the puzzle that he struggled for, "You switched his medication, didn't you? I bet you did that, right before the exam when he was revising. The pen thing was just a stupid decoy, he knew I'd see that. Nice."

John turned to glare at him. What the hell was wrong with Sherlock? Who was 'he'? Why was he saying 'nice' of all things? He knew he would give anything to have Sherlock smile again, but. . . not _this_ way.

But just as he turned back, he could see that Soo Lin had blanched. John felt unmistakeable triumph returning to him.

"You're already afraid. You reek of fear," Sherlock declared. "It would be best if we just got it over with. Powers took his meds before exam began. Five minutes before any exam begins, all students are required to keep their bags outside the hall. You switched the medication before exam and then, before Powers died, you left the hall and switched it back. I saw you leave the hall in the middle of the exam, I remember but I didn't think it was important until I saw you steal the pen," Sherlock smirked, "Jim Moriarty asked you to do that, didn't he? He's playing a game. He said he wanted to play. He gave me clues, told me that I liked things to be clever. This isn't clever. His hint."

Soo Lin rolled her eyes, but John could see fear clearly written on her. Fear and defiance. He couldn't believe that Sherlock had kept this from him.

Sherlock smirked.

"I can fix it for you, you know," Sherlock said, "I know you helped with killing Carl Powers. I know you went to extraordinary lengths to help Jim do this. But think for one second, does Jim trust you on this? He would've kept the evidence needed to expel you. Think about it. You came all the way from China for this. Can you let him do this to you?"

Emotions flitted through Soo Lin: fear, guilt, anger, confusion and finally, sense. That looked like it struck home, because Soo Lin subdued into a small ball of misery, "I don't have it."

Sherlock sniggered, "Why would you? You gave it to Jim, didn't you?"

"No," Soo Lin looked away, "I didn't trust him. So I kept Powers' real medication for myself while I gave him the fake one. I threw all the evidence away. I didn't want him to use something else against me again after. . . after. . ."

John looked at Sherlock in wonder. The Soo Lin girl was clever enough to trick Jim Moriarty. He was thrown off by the almost moved expression on Sherlock's face. He wondered if Sherlock slowly finding things to replace him. He should. It was for the best, John lied to himself, but then shook his head. He really shouldn't think about anything else than this now.

"After what?" Sherlock pressed on, a hint of manic in his voice, "What did he use against you, Soo Lin? What power does he have over you?"

Soo Lin did not meet his eyes as she tried to blink away her tears, "My brother Liang."


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for delay, I probably will be saying sorry in every author note for the delays. Semester exams have been kicking my ass

"Liang?" Sherlock echoed, "Is he dead too?"

John slumped against his chair in exasperation. Sherlock's tact at its best. "Mr. Holmes," he began warningly. That trick usually worked on him, but John did not know whether it still did.

Great, how more complicated was this going to get? Boy gets killed, pen is assumed to be a weapon which Sherlock declares as a decoy and then, the actual thing apparently is some soluble pills which are completely harmless but since they're not the medication, the death occurs, and now some brother too?

John shook his head. He shouldn't think like that. All he had to do was to concentrate on the girl alone and take Sherlock away from this as far as possible, shield him away and keep him safe, and if possible, sane. Best not to make him a target of this Moriarty fellow.

"Sorry," Sherlock uttered softly. John fought back a wistful smile at that.

"No," she said forcefully with a gentle sob, horrified at that, "He—he's in China. Please, I can't say anything more. Please. Look," she cleared her throat, "you know what I did, but you have no way of p-proving it. Just forget that this ever happened and—"

Sherlock looked blank for a moment. John looked away and frowned, not used to Sherlock looking blank at such things. Miss Yao was one of those students who he wouldn't have known if she had not been a foreigner, but seeing as he had a say over his students to an extent that many others couldn't manage, he spoke, trying to be soothing and in control.

"Miss Yao," John began as an attempt to cover up for Sherlock's momentary phase-out, "if you realise what you've done—"

"I had to!" she insisted, and then looked down, away, "please. Professor," she looked beseechingly at John, "believe me, please."

"What's your brother got to do with this?" Sherlock asked calmly, making eyes at John not to give her hysteria. As if John was the one giving her hysteria.

She gritted her teeth, her tears not weakening her determination, "What are you, some sort of police?"

Sherlock smirked, "That's an ambition I'd rather not achieve. But you're right. I don't have _solid_ proof but I can still tell Jim what you did with his medication. That will not be good for—"

Whatever little colour was there on her face drained away, "Please, no!" she begged imploringly. "Please don't. Let me go."

John tried to meet Sherlock's eyes, ask him to stop. She was begging, for God's sake. There must be something that she did not want to say. Why was Sherlock forcing her so much when it was clearly painful for her? But Sherlock pointedly looked away. It was clear that he did not want to discuss this with him. He thought Sherlock had. . . changed, for good, after all that drama with Harry and Clara. He thought Sherlock had learnt, that sometimes ends did not justify the means.

"The door's that way. But, if you walk out of that door, I'll make sure that I tell Jim of what you've done—"

"No," she let out a gasp, and then looked away, not wanting to give much of herself, "don't. . . do that! It's. . . illegal, what. . . I'm doing for my brother. Otherwise Jim will not let him come to me. He might. . . hurt him, like he. . ." she gulped, "hurt Powers."

"What you did," Sherlock pointed out with a shrug and John wanted to kick the hell out of him for being so nonchalant about her misery, "to Powers was illegal as well."

Soo Lin subdued and she tried to wipe her eyes away without letting them see. Sherlock pitched his voice deeper as he continued in a much gentler voice, "Now, tell me about Liang."

She gulped, and looked at John, "My brother, he's. . . he's seven. He lived in. . . Ch-China with our g-grandmother—"

"Lived?" Sherlock interrupted. John crossed his arms, thankful that Sherlock was now being a little tender. He didn't try to think why he couldn't stop him from not being so.

"She passed away last month, and he's all alone. I don't have enough. . . money to go there and exit visas are rare so. . ."

Sherlock blanched at that as he gulped, "So you're getting him smuggled here."

She looked away ashamedly, confirming that. John looked from Sherlock to her, "And what role is Jim Moriarty playing in all this?" he tried to subdue the slight chill that ran through him as he folded his arms, "He's helping?"

He couldn't believe it. Of all the people, he couldn't be teaching anatomy to a child smuggler.

"No. He gave me the money. P-put me in t-touch with some Union members who knew people like that, who could—you know," she avoided his curious gaze as she contemplated over her own words, "He just seemed to know that I needed q-quick money, and he said that I needn't pay it back if I did something for him too. . ."

John glanced at Sherlock, and then thought it over on his own. What were the youngsters of today up to? He always knew something was wrong with Moriarty. The boy was sweet, yes, he seemed like a good boy, always listened to his teachers, always did his lab work the best. But when John kept an eye around Sherlock and saw Moriarty around him, looking, leering, it would take all of John's strength to go on with his lecture unconcernedly instead of throwing the kid out of the class with a kick to his bum.

"I—I haven't even told this to any of my friends and he just knew," she looked at John pleadingly, and John felt like a torturer, "I-I—please, professor—my brother's just a child. He doesn't know what I did. He'll die without me, if this comes to the light of the metro. . ."

At that, Sherlock stood up and promptly walked away, leaving Soo Lin and John stunned at that. John stared after him weakly as Soo Lin finally began crying silently into her handkerchief. John licked his lips, torn between wanting to follow Sherlock and having to console Soo Lin and apologise on Sherlock's behalf.

"Professor Watson," she looked at him with wide dark eyes, "I know what I did wasn't right, but I did not do it out of spite. I will never. I—I did not even know th-that Carl had a heart di-disease. He said that the pills were harmless," she sniffed tearfully, "I even tested for myself before I switched them so that I knew that he wasn't fooling me. I—I haven't got a proper night's sleep since his passing away. You've got to believe me, please!"

John swallowed the lump in his throat and blinked. After a length, he got up and patted her shoulder softly, "I'd better search for Mr. Holmes, where he went off. You may go."

"But," she began, alarmed, "professor—!"

"I assure you he won't reveal your secret," John nodded imperiously. He knew Sherlock. Sherlock would never do anything like that. "I'm sure of it."

She didn't look entirely convinced, but she nodded and wiped her face. Just before walking out of the class rather stoically for a girl who had broken down in front of two next-to-stranger men, she turned to John, and let out an disbelieving laugh, "You know, professor, he. . . Holmes. . . he said the same thing. . . that Jim said," she shook her head and slung her bookbag over her shoulder, "I wouldn't be trusting him but for you."

John blinked, "What?"

" _I can fix it for you, Soo Lin_ ," she chanted Sherlock's words back to John, "Jim said the same things. From the words to the tone, every single the same. . . the same."

And with that, she left, leaving John bemused over it. He made sure that she was gone before he took the route that Sherlock had taken. What had gotten into him? Was this still some way to show John that he was still pissed off at him? How much reminding did he need? John was nothing if not sorry for the last night. There was nothing he'd not do to take it back. But not here. They were doing something else. For once, they should put their differences behind themselves and . . .

He tried not to ponder over Soo Linn's last words. Sherlock was nothing like Jim, that little shit, in no manner.

When he counted down fifteen minutes of Sherlock not returning, he stood up and decided to go search for him. One thing he had understood very well. He had to keep a more careful eye out for Sherlock from now on.

John's eyes darted everywhere, the doors of the various classrooms, the balcony overlooking the grounds, the lavatory at the end of the corridor. John tried not to draw attention to himself upon seeing a couple of girls and boys sitting on the steps to the third floor, moreover not as someone calling for the infamous Sherlock Holmes of all people.

"Mr. Holmes?" he whisper-shouted. John kept his breathing steady even as his heart leaped in his chest. Where had Sherlock gone off to? He glanced at his watch. The twentieth minute was approaching and yet Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. His eyes roamed places, and he tried to camouflage himself between the hordes of students coming out of a class. As much as he wanted to find him, he did not want to admit to Sherlock that he was searching for him. He pretended to be interested in the notice board as he realised that a scantful group of freshmen were trying to stifle their blushes and giggles at the sight of him. He ignored them without a second thought as he immersed himself into the notices. Glossy posters of the coming soon _Spring_ _Fest_ inviting participants stared back at him and he glanced at his reflection.

Sherlock was staring back at him. John's heart gave a jolt, half out of fright, half out of the intensity of the familiar gaze that he had missed so much. He took him two seconds to recover himself from the shock and to turn around to face Sherlock.

"Christ, Holmes," John gulped it down, "What the hell has gotten into you?"

"I went to. . . get some fresh air," Sherlock looked away unflappably, tucking his arms behind his back and expanding his chest.

"Fresh air?" John cocked an eyebrow suspiciously. Something told him that Sherlock had been coming out of the classroom which was just dismissed.

"Yes. There was a lot of tears in that room."

John sighed at his manner and glanced surreptitiously at his watch. He had a class now. He was supposed to be teaching the freshers about posterior thoracic wall and in short, wrapping the syllabus up before the Spring Fest and the subsequent spring break. And yet, here he was, spending it with Sherlock trying to dig out secrets of Soo Lin Yao.

"What about. . . erm, Soo Lin?" he asked as he turned towards the balcony. John followed his gaze to find a couple of guys playing soccer in the grounds. He went and leant against the wall, watching Sherlock's face carefully.

"I dismissed her after you walked out rather dramatically."

Sherlock sent him a sharp look and John beat him to it, "You might want to explain to her why you did that sort of thing. It wasn't very. . . wise."

"You mean explain to you, not her," Sherlock bit back, and John held his gaze fiercely.

"And to me as well," he agreed, "When I say her, I mean in my presence. I'm not letting you anywhere near her all alone."

The corner of Sherlock's mouth twitched menacingly as he turned around to face the way John was facing, "Why? Does she bite?"

John shook his head at Sherlock's sardonic tone. At least he should take it a little more seriously, when he had been the one to start it all, "Sherlock, she killed someone, if not willingly, but still. . . You know, she was shocked when. . ." he trailed off, when he felt a couple of eyes on them. Looking to his right, he saw some students on the stairs glancing at the odd pair. John cleared his throat and stiffened, furrowing his brows. He ought not be so casual with Sherlock, not out in public. "Not here. My office," he whispered.

Sherlock straightened up too. John saw him watching him with a calculating expression, where he had foolishly expected him to look at him with longing at having to set up an act in front of others. He had a gut feeling that Sherlock was still not over them. But he didn't trust it. Sherlock was completely unaffected to John's misery around him and able to ignore him in others' presence much better.

"I can't believe this," Sherlock raised his voice. "This is ridiculous!"

"Well," John raised his voice another notch, but mostly kept his voice level and in control unlike Sherlock, who kept looking more and more murderous as moments passed by, "you're ridiculous. I am getting that assignment on my desk tomorrow ten o'clock, or I'll make sure that you don't pass this year."

Sherlock looked completely enraged, as a few titters came from the students behind them, one of them even muttering, "Same ol' Holmes." He had never felt more guilty before. But the crash and recede of adrenaline ruled all of that out.

"You can't do that," Sherlock spoke condescendingly, "you're not even a proper professor!"

This time, John genuinely narrowed his eyes. What the hell did he mean by John not being a proper professor? "Oh, really? You'll see how proper I am when you'll receive your GPA, Mr. Holmes! And you can go and work on your assignment instead of sulking like a teenage girl!"

Sherlock pursed his lips, and turned around, walking away like a wronged prima-donna towards an alternate route. John blew out a breath, glanced at the students and told himself that they did not suspect anything off in the way Sherlock and he had tensed up in the blink of an eye after looking so relaxed.

With a sigh and an audible whisper of, "what a douche," in Sherlock's direction to seal his performance convincingly, he calmed himself down and made his way towards the staircases and out of the UG Science Building. His heart hammered in his chest. It was only the tangled Carl Powers business and only a one-and-a-half years. Then, Sherlock would leave and John wouldn't feel the familiar spike of blind lust and longing whenever he would see a uncovered patch of Sherlock's skin and resist himself from pressing his nose to his neck and breathe him in.

John nodded to himself as he kept walking with sure, decisive strides up to PG Science. His bag felt heavier at the thought.

He cast another last look at his shirt and his cardigan and at the unruly creases of his trousers, just to ensure that he looked well-groomed at the least. There was a little mud on the shoes. He tried to scrape it away against the banister of the staircase clumsily, while glancing around to ensure that nobody saw him.

As he approached the corridor, he saw Sherlock waiting outside. He sighed. After having told the youth ostensibly many-a-times to wait for him _patiently_ , he never thought that he was going to miss Sherlock's lock-picking skills so much.

Sherlock stepped away to let John open the door. John briefly considered holding it open for Sherlock, but he could only imagine the glare that the latter would throw in his direction. He strode in hurriedly and whispered, "Close the door behind you."

John's frayed nerves, which he thought would improve by the time he would reach the safety and the privacy of his office, had only deteriorated, and he fumbled clumsily with his bag and setting the general disarray of things into some order. Sherlock stood near the door decisively, gazing at his awkward actions with some all-too familiar interest and amusement that John decided to curb at once.

"Well, don't just stand there. Explain while I arrange this place. I have another class in fifteen minutes."

The look drained from Sherlock's face, "There's nothing to be explained."

"Oh really?" John sent him a pointed glare, "Well you can start with why you chose to run away from there."

"I did not run," Sherlock exclaimed harshly, "I merely needed some space."

"What could you possibly have needed space for?!" John said with a derisive snort. "Soo Lin's the one who's traumatised—"

"She's the one who _killed_ Powers in the first place. I don't care whether it was for her brother or not, She had enough time to be traumatised," Sherlock said condescendingly.

"If you don't care," John paused in his tracks, "then you wouldn't have run away because it wouldn't have mattered—"

"I did not run away!" Sherlock all but growled angrily. John stared at him, surprised at the sudden outburst. He had not really expected that, because anger wasn't something he usually saw in Sherlock. Sherlock usually wasn't like what he was being now.

"This is a university, Mr. Holmes," he spoke calmly but with the sense of authority that being a professor entitled him to, "I would prefer if you kept your voice level with mine."

Sherlock gritted his teeth and then looked away, towards the window, and then began looking anywhere that was John.

"Please be careful, Sherlock," John continued after a long time of silence was beginning to become saturated with unnecessary thoughts, "what you did—what you're doing now-a-days—is not prudent."

"I think I'll understand that better, won't I?" Sherlock replied dryly.

"If you did, you would never have got into this. You've done enough work, this ceases to be a simple murder—excuse that. Soo Lin had her own reasons and we're not anybody to deliver justice, are we—?"

Sherlock gaped at him for a few wordless moments. He looked incredulous. John frowned at him self-consciously. Why was Sherlock looking at him like that?

"I can't believe you just said that," was what Sherlock uttered, "you're walking away?! What else are you going to run away from, John?"

"Please listen to me," John overrode him, "You heard what Soo Lin said. Don't get involved—"

But one of Sherlock's hands curled around his wrist. John tried to yank it away, shocked at his gesture, but Sherlock held on tight. He looked like a man on the verge of falling off, begging John not to let him go. John refused to think of Sherlock like that, as weak. It just didn't fit with the image of Sherlock he had in his mind.

"Mr. Holmes," he seethed through clenched jaws, "you will let go of my hand."

"Make me." John looked at his eyes. There wasn't the lust he had seen that night in Sherlock's eyes. It was desperation, and some bit of spite. John looked away. The look did not suit Sherlock, "So easy for you, isn't it? Indulge, and then walk away."

"What are you suggesting then?" John challenged him, trying not to think that he hadn't been this physically close to Sherlock since more than half-a-month ago, "Any other circumstances, and I would've strove hard to ensure that the matter came to light to the right authorities. But. . ." he looked down at Sherlock's larger hand clasping his with bruising strength, and he just knew how emotionally vulnerable Sherlock was at this point, if he had to resort to making the turmoil inside himself dissipate by using physical force, "he's a kid, Mr. Holmes. He won't survive without her."

The hard expression dissolved from Sherlock's face, the lines smoothed away, and he let go of John's wrist. John massaged his wrist gingerly. He had forgotten just how steel-strong Sherlock's grip could be. He tried not to think anymore of it. He could see the emotional turmoil in Sherlock. Now that they knew—he knew Soo Lin's secret—he didn't know what to do with it. Moriarty had done his damage by using her secret against her, but now that Sherlock had it, the knowledge damned him more than the absence of it would have.

Somehow, the knowledge was damning for him too. He had got swept along with Sherlock in the excitement of it, the small rush of adrenaline, but he just hadn't pondered the consequences of knowing whatever it was that they were not supposed to know. John had never really been erroneous at determining what was right or wrong. Sherlock had successfully mucked that up twice. If they handed Soo Lin over to the metro for the sake of Carl's justice, Soo Lin's little brother would suffer. If they tried to cover Soo Lin's side, it would be injustice to Carl. John could pretend to himself that it wasn't up to him to give Carl justice, but his own conscience won't be clear. It shocked John to know that he sort of held the fate of a person in his hands.

And now, Sherlock had the same dilemma.

"And it's not like people know that she's getting her brother. . . into London," John spoke. Right or wrong, keeping Sherlock away from all of it came first.

"They could," Sherlock replied in a low tone, with guilt waning over the edges of his downturned mouth, "I got her confession recorded."

John went numb. Sherlock couldn't have possibly said what he said, "You did _what_?"

"I never thought she would do this because of—" Sherlock began defensively, but John cut across him. The whole thing was turning into a big nightmare.

"Sherlock, you—how _could_ you?!" John felt shocked, and betrayed and used. After going through every step that Sherlock had told him to, after following every word to the letter, this was what he was being rewarded with. Sherlock couldn't have bothered to tell him that. . . he was up to _this_?! "How could you not tell me?"

"What difference could it possibly have made?" Sherlock argued, "I'd have to have spend precious time convincing you!"

"You can see the difference for yourself now," John let out a humourless laugh and shook his head, "Christ, ever heard of something called peace of mind? You successfully butchered yours, and mine too! Congratulations! I hope it's safe with you, because I gave that girl my word, Sherlock. _My_ _word_ , that you wouldn't use her secret against her!"

"Why're you getting involved?" Sherlock demanded petulantly. "I never invited you along, did I?"

John stared at him incredulously for a beat. Getting involved? _Invited him along?_ Sherlock stared back at him defiantly. John thought he was supposed to. . . lead on and follow Sherlock wherever he went, that was until Sherlock left St. Bart's. He had never thought that Sherlock might not like that.

"Yes you didn't," John nodded coldly and sucked in a painful breath before continuing more dispiritedly than before when he realised that Sherlock wasn't answering his questions as directly as he would've wanted him to, "but. . . just hear me out, Sherlock. . . You, by any chance, wouldn't do anything like that, would you? I mean, holy shit, I wish I could forget it, it was such a terrible thing to listen to, but. . ."

John waited for it. The rudely put reassurance of _Don't be an idiot, John, of course I'll keep the whole thing a secret,_ but when Sherlock stared at him steadily and disconcertingly without blinking, John gulped and said the words, just to reassure himself. He knew Sherlock. Sherlock was a good man, even Abbott said so, and John was never really wrong about determining a person.

"I know you wouldn't do anything like that. . . but I'm just confirming, and reminding you," he went to lean forward and touch Sherlock on the wrist awkwardly, but when he remembered that Sherlock would pull away as if he had been burned, John withdrew and looked away towards the window, not wanting to meet Sherlock's eyes when he said it, "I know you for real."

"Is this blackmail?" Sherlock spat venomously, but still not meeting his eye. John was sure that if he put the Sherlock before Christmas alongside with the man in front of him, they'd not know each other.

"How would I blackmail you using only my words? You can barely even tolerate me."

"True, if that's what helps you sleep at night," Sherlock snorted but it never came out as a broken sort of sound that should've reassured John that Sherlock did not think him as fickle and weak, but it didn't. John tried to brush it away. Every time he and Sherlock strayed into the uncertainty to their burgeoning potential, their conversation always came out as forced and awkward. It was best to just avoid it.

"Right, I see you're continuously avoiding my real question."

"Which is?" Sherlock asked studiously and John squinted at him.

"Why you ran—walked out on Soo Lin. She was shocked, she thought you would tell about her business to somebody. Look, I told that girl, I gave her my word that you wouldn't say anything—"

"She's a murderess. Prune out everything that might cloud your judgement like that seven-year-old kid and listen to your brain. She had her own reasons yes, all of them logical, but she killed a guy. Who cares about a kid?"

"She didn't even _know_ that Powers had a disease!" John insisted. Sherlock had to be pretending. Sherlock couldn't be not caring about a seven year old kid coming alone into England and making his way through without his sister to back him up for school.

"She could've been lying. What are you, her lawyer?"

"Right, _you_ could've been lying, if you were in her place. She's a human being, for God's sake, she can't lie while crying like—"

John stopped short when he realised what he was saying. Sherlock's eyes narrowed dangerously at that, and John felt that he had done irreparable damage to their already crumbling association. He was gripped by the sort of terror he had once felt when a rogue knee had shattered his shoulder open. For the first time, the roaring in his ears made him acutely aware that the world was in constant rotation. He tried to tell Sherlock, opened his mouth to tell him that he didn't mean it even if he did, in a completely different way, but no sound came out.

"Right. And it doesn't seem like I appear in your definition of a human being," came out the words John had dreaded. The world around him spun faster and faster until John couldn't feel any dizzier. He wanted to seal his lips together with his hands, with his mouth, nonetheless, Sherlock had scoffed and there was nothing John could do except for say his name numbly.

"Sherlock. . ."

"Granted, Soo Lin did what she had to do—"

"—she murdered someone," John sucked in a harsh breath that stayed in his throat like a lump, "And you're right. She did very wrong, but then fate was against her. She'd have to work three jobs for more than four months to make that much money. She was just. . ." John looked away, "unfortunate."

For a long time, Sherlock was silent as he contemplated John's words and kept coming back to what John had said earlier.

"You think that I can fake tears. . . because I'm heartless. Because I'm not human."

"Sherlock please," John began, "let's not—"

"Let's not what, John? Talk about the truth? Because truth is what people seem to hate the most. Why can't you just take things the way they come to you? Why do you have to twist it into something that you'd like to hear?"

John looked away, "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you?" Sherlock smiled as if pitying John for being so ordinary and weak to not be able to take the truth of Sherlock and him completely. "Oh, I think you do better than you think you might."

Sherlock," John began in a voice that was steadier than his heart, "stop—"

"Why don't you say it then?" Sherlock demanded, "Say that I'm a fake. I can fake tears because I'm heartless, and I faked my feelings for you. This is what you tell yourself, don't you, when you can't sleep because you feel guilty for having "taken advantage of your below-twenty student" and then you say that "Sherlock was obviously only playing with me so he can't be very affected about all this"? Well, guess what, guilt will get you nowhere."

"No," John shook his head, "it's what you wish to be the truth. You wish that you had only kept it playful."

For one second, Sherlock looked stung, and then his features rapidly hardened, "I'd have, but you coming over was something I had not predicted."

John blinked and gaped at Sherlock. He had wished with every bone in his body to take back that night even though it had been the best night of his life, but he had never really thought about what would've happened to the next day if they had not had sex that night. He wondered if he'd still be able to breathe if he hadn't felt Sherlock around him that night.

"You kissing me was unpredictable," John countered.

"Was it, now? Had I never made it clear that I wanted to be with you? When I wanted to see what the people closest to you were like?  When that blasted girlfriend of yours slapped me and I took it without a word? When I kept showing up for a date for three weeks? All that was unpredictable too, I suppose?"

Yes it was, John thought. John had never thought that Sherlock would care, that Sherlock was going to judge John on the basis of Harry. It was a good thing that Sherlock hadn't given up on him after that.

"Sherlock," he began in a voice that was steadier than his heart, "stop—"

"Do you even know how humiliating an intervention can be, where your mother keeps saying that she's disappointed in you and your arse of a brother keeps reminding you of your shortcomings? That's what I was reminded of when you all "spoke" to Harriet. And you think me kissing you was unpredictable," Sherlock looked positively livid, his expression betraying his low, quiet voice and John took another step back at this transformation from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.

John gulped, rising from his chair, "Sherlock, I said shut up—"

"I tried and tried and tried, I've never tried so hard, and yet you just. . ." Sherlock let out a humourless laugh, "you simply kept pushing me away. What is it that you hate in me so much?"

John stared at Sherlock's trembling lips. It kept him awake all night every night, the constant guilt, the weight of it all, all that Sherlock had done and how he had taken it all without a word of protest. But the man himself laying all that in front of him was much worse.

Oh, how he had abused Sherlock's adoration. How he had destroyed their potential with his very words and his fear, that it had ultimately led Sherlock to believe that John hated him. Yes, it had been to keep them away from further hurt, to keep Sherlock from the hate of the rest of the world, to keep Sherlock from leaving, to keep Sherlock from coming to know the John behind the charismatic professor he probably adored, the man he probably would get bored with in a second. Professors were jerks and students tended to be attracted to their ability of being a jerk and be charming at the same time at least once in their lifetime, and wouldn't it be great for John to see the illusion of himself broken, to see Sherlock fall out of the fling in front of his own eyes.

Wouldn't that just be great, regardless of what Sherlock had kept assuring him?

He tried to tell himself that his reasons had been valid, that it had been wiser and right, to curb it before it grew any further. . . but it had cost so much. Two weeks away from Sherlock, from those flirty innuendos and cheeky replies and those Mondays and Thursdays and the constant desire to be near him, and it had taught him just how much he had wanted him too, in spite of having driven a wedge between the two of them. John had seen a lot of the world; it was brutal and cruel and dark. But Sherlock, he was everything that was not all that.

"Sherlock, stop," John began, only a bit stronger than before.

Sherlock looked away. John could see his nails trying to dig into the woodwork of his desk, his lower jaw clenched tightly. John knew that it was cruel of him to want Sherlock to be in pain just because he was in pain too, and it infuriated him further when all he could see written on Sherlock was anger. And a demand for answers that John didn't have.

John crossed his arms over his chest defensively and spoke quietly, "What about the part where I said that I didn't want you to leave?"

Sherlock scoffed at that, and John wondered for a moment if Sherlock really thought his feelings so insignificant to his own.

"You really are spectacularly selfish," Sherlock retorted with a false chuckle as he stood up to meet and dominate John's height, "never thought about anybody but you," Sherlock face twisted into a scowl, "Never thought that I'd be better off away from you with all this," he gestured venomously at them, "behind me, forgotten," he spat.

John looked down at his hands, where his palms lay sweating. It was truly a surprise that his body hadn't collapsed in the wake of the force of his heart thundering in his chest. Yes, it would've been better, for Sherlock, to leave, go away to Oxford or abroad. As far as possible from London.

"Maybe, I don't. . . want to forget," John glanced at him just in time to see Sherlock's expression drop entirely. He waited for the response. He knew that if he gave too much of himself away to Sherlock, the latter would simply end up ridiculing him and make him wish for the earth to open up under him and swallow him whole.

For a split second, Sherlock stared at him numbly. John started to think that he had made the gravest miscalculation of his life, telling Sherlock that, because Sherlock clearly wanted to forget him and John was the one trying to keep him from that. He couldn't stare Sherlock down this time, his gaze was like the glare of the sun.

Without thinking, John took a step towards him, mouth hung open and mirroring Sherlock's expression. Sherlock eyes, they still glittered with a brilliance that had always set him apart. Unable to meet them anymore, his gaze automatically dropped to Sherlock's lips. He replayed in his mind the last time he had been this close to Sherlock with his own consent, in his flat in Baker Street, looking down at Sherlock's naked feet and realising their potential fully for the first time, and he had given himself away, away to Sherlock, and seen the final, the incontrovertible proof that Sherlock was a man and that there would be no going back.

He let himself feel being so close to Sherlock after so long, after ignoring him in the class, after trying to go on without him, after trying to find everything else to occupy him, anything but the sensation of being close to Sherlock and the raw pheromones which belonged to him and him only, but it had been nothing but pure torture. He closed his eyes, imagining dragging his mouth all over him, wasting the moans which came from Sherlock's smart, soft, velvety mouth and letting it all spill in luxury. He remembered Sherlock's body, and what it had been like to worship it. Even if he tried his best, he wouldn't be able to forget it. Not ever.

Sherlock stayed unmoving for his part, as John braced himself in the anticipation of losing to him for a second time. He knew all about that, losing himself, in Sherlock's proximity, in his touch and the sounds he made and in the way he felt around him. He parted his lips and opened his mouth wider, but none came to kiss him back. He wanted to touch, he wanted to feel, so much that his head was bursting with frustration and desire. He could hear his own breathing, and he wanted to raise his own hands to push back at Sherlock's chest, back and back at him till his head hit the wall and till he was lost in oblivion, lost in the knowledge that Sherlock still wanted him, despite what he had made John think, despite what John had done to him.

When he opened his eyes in dismay, already half on his way to cursing himself for being so stupid and for losing his control on himself in front of Sherlock so easily, he was greeted by the cross eyed sight of only darkness clashing with pale skin. A hand in the small of his back forced him closer towards Sherlock till he could feel him chest to chest and heart to heart. He dared not touch Sherlock now. He awaited him with bated breath as he tried to lean in closer to him, half-panicked at the unstoppable flow of time at every second that Sherlock kept distance between them. He looked down to see Sherlock's fingers on the waistband of his trousers. A brush of them with his own made him shiver with anticipation as Sherlock leaned forward and slowly trailed his mouth down his temple and to his neck, just brushing and breathing but it was enough to make John groan in pleasure.

John closed his eyes, feeling relief and tension gush through him all at once. He pressed the side of his face to Sherlock's in turn, placing gentle kisses there and revelling in the intimacy of being so close to Sherlock after having not been able to touch the man for so many days. The smell of his neck was still the same, the feel of his skin like wind-levelled rock, the sound of his breath mesmerising, as if it alone could absolve all the pain and all the misgivings. He let out a soft whimper as Sherlock ran his tongue along his neck and John closed his eyes, gasping at his gentle, tentative touches. He pressed himself to Sherlock just as he felt him parting away from his body. No, not now. He couldn't let go now. Not yet.

But Sherlock drew back and propped his forehead against John's, inhaling deeply.

"We're drifting away," he whispered, and John's stomach dropped back into the pit, seeing as he hadn't yet regained his ability of speech. John couldn't shake off the feeling that there seemed to be a shadow hovering over them.

"Yes we are," he stammered breathlessly. Sherlock's lips looked redder, much more delectable in the light, "sorry."

He had expected Sherlock to push him away, after having unconsciously tried to take advantage of him for the second time, but Sherlock drew back until he opened his mouth and took John's upper lip between his lips, so slowly that it felt like John's life had slowed down for the last moments of his existence. There would be no better place than in Sherlock's arms around his waist to spend them.

Sherlock drew out his tongue and tentatively met John's, stroking and touching and massaging without closing his mouth on John's, almost as if seeking reassurance that John wouldn't push him away, that he wouldn't end this before it even became something. It was almost too much. John could still see that Sherlock's eyes were open, threatening to droop close as Sherlock withdrew and trailed his lips over John's with the slightest of brushes. John wanted to wake up from the surreal dream, because a dream was what it was. Sherlock still tasted the same, albeit of more cigarette smoke than he used to, meaning he smoked more than the amount that John had brought down to before Christmas, but the point was that it couldn't be same. Sherlock still couldn't feel and taste and smell the same, John thought as he trembled from head to toe. Sherlock did not look at him the same way, eyes full of wonder and adoration, the sort which made John feel positively blessed. Sherlock did not smile that same crooked half-smile. He had become as cold and indifferent as the rest of his body language made him look like. How could he still be the same Sherlock?

John tilted his head to kiss Sherlock deeper and harder, and Sherlock took the gesture to pull him closer into an open-mouthed drag of lips against lips. John trailed his hands over Sherlock's arms, lanky but still muscular enough to feel the fibres of his shirt tautening every time Sherlock moved against John. The kiss, which had been so tentative and gentle, suddenly heated up. Their tongues danced together wet and hot as John pressed his hand to Sherlock's back and drew him closer to fling his arms around his shoulders. Sherlock abruptly broke the kiss to bury his face in John's neck and John let out an deep exhale as he sucked on the clammy flesh. He felt so helpless, unable to do anything, unable to make Sherlock feel the way Sherlock was making him feel. He wanted to turn Sherlock back into the wall and fuck him there, right in his office. He wanted to come apart inside him, he wanted to sleep with Sherlock again, do all the things that he hadn't got the chance to do that night. He had been in such a hurry then, afraid that it was only a dream, and soon he'd wake up with his hand down his pants and no trace of Sherlock beside him.

He was only barely aware of Sherlock trying to pull his shirt out of the hem of his trousers and in response, he began to unbutton Sherlock's shirt, just a bleak second chance but a chance nonetheless. John cupped a hand to the back of Sherlock's hair and the nape of his neck, gripping and pulling him harder and deeper against his lips. He felt the place between his legs give a twinge.

Sherlock encircled his waist completely as he kept kissing John's neck, sometimes opening his mouth to press his tongue against the skin and bite it only till the patch of sensitive skin gave away to promising bruises the size of his mouth. John tossed his head to his left, kissing the side of Sherlock's face in a tiny attempt to show that even he felt what Sherlock did, even though he ought not to. He had stayed away for days. He couldn't give in now.

Sherlock returned to his mouth and all thoughts flew from John's mind once again when he pushed at his tongue with his. John ran his hands over the curve of his shoulders and tried to take off his shirt. His brain had never been conflicted more. He wanted to be the one to take away all the doubts that Sherlock probably had in his mind about John's feelings for him till there were none left, but he knew that what he was doing won't get him anywhere. He'd still be a teacher, and Sherlock would still be his student.

Somehow, John shed Sherlock's shirt just as Sherlock finally unbuttoned the last button of John's shirt. His skin was still the same, the creamy tone had become much ruddier than it normally would be. How peaceful, how restless, feeling Sherlock that way again, raking his nails against his bones and his skin and felt Sherlock's fingers sinking into his flesh. The skin so alive, so warm and responsive to his touch. John could feel the goosebumps on him as they stayed like that for some moments, just relishing their closeness and the feeling of skin on skin. He glanced up at Sherlock's eyes and looked down at once when he saw Sherlock watching him wide-eyed. John lightly touched the skin of his neck and felt the frantic pulse there, before letting his hands roam on Sherlock's chest tenderly. John pressed a light kiss to his mouth, before sinking his fingers into Sherlock's hair and gripping the base of his neck tightly.

The press of Sherlock's mouth became insistent, and John staggered backwards with the force of the kiss, only that it was more like an invasion, as Sherlock pressed him against the bureau, crowding up the space between them till there was none left. It was nothing like the first time they had kissed, hungry and needy. It was nothing like the last time Sherlock had kissed him, honey-slow but desperate. This was his anger, his frustration and even if it shouldn't, it tasted delicious, his soft, hot, wet tongue against John's. John gasped into Sherlock's mouth at the sensation and winced as Sherlock pressed him against his desk painfully. He tried to struggle, but it was proving futile. Body had stopped working again, and soon the brain too, because he couldn't be doing this. Not again.

No, brain was working. Otherwise he wouldn't be thinking that. All he could be thinking of was how right Sherlock's mouth felt on his and how wet and how hot it was. Oh, the scent of his skin, of the sweat trickling down his body, the textures of his skin, John wanted to follow it all the way to its destination with his teeth and tongue. The way Sherlock looked at him for the tiniest minutes during their shared breaths, only a phantom of how he used to look at John but it was more than enough, added to the intensity of their secret making out. The small room was thick with the heady smell of their entwined bodies and John was sure that the people beyond the door were looking in the direction of John's nameplate nose-first.

"Sherlock. . ." he tried to grab the man's shoulders, to hold on, to push him away, but all he could do as press himself flush against him and kiss him back with the same intensity. He opened his mouth wider, only to feel Sherlock's mouth leaving his. Still dazed, he slowly opened his eyes to met Sherlock's dilated, but cold ones. John felt another pang in his stomach when Sherlock wiped his mouth, the remnants of John's saliva mixed with his on the back of his hand. John felt his lips sting with where Sherlock had attacked them with his teeth. The inexorable draw he felt to this man, this impossible man with his impossible deductions and his attitude and his recklessness, was simply too strong for him to resist, too powerful for either of them to deny.

After a beat, Sherlock grabbed his shirt and began to put it on mechanically, as if saying his name had somehow awoken him to what they were doing, and to the likelihood that he was about to get rejected again.

"Shouldn't have done that," Sherlock shook his head and spoke breathlessly, his skin flushed beautifully, "all. . . _that_."

"Yes, we shouldn't have," John allowed himself to feast his eyes on his body as every new button swallowed up the delectable skin, the sounds of his panting breath hot, right in his ear. John looked below where his belt was visible, and what he had done once upon a time. The thought itself tore him to bits, his need against his obligation.

"It was wrong."

"Yes it was.

They stared at each other in silence mixed with panting breaths before Sherlock gave in.

"Kiss me again," was the only coherent thing John could hear leaving his mouth when he thought about Sherlock's hard, warm body against him, and felt his stomach clenching in response. He had wanted this even when they had been in the same room a couple of days ago, but Sherlock did not seem acquiescent and John wasn't sure if he could take any form of rejection, however vague.

Sherlock did a funny thing with his mouth then, licking his upper lip and then pressing it against his teeth, and John’s stomach did a somersault in response. He still remembered that upper lip, the way it felt, the way it tasted; the lower one, too. He still tasted the same, albeit of more nicotine than he used to. The sound of their entwined breaths, their proximity, Sherlock's splotched complexion was too much for John at one time. He fisted his hand in Sherlock's collar, and pulled him towards himself again. He knew he had taken Sherlock by surprise, because their mouths crashed clumsily between the seam of their lips. John flung his arms around Sherlock's neck and pulled him into himself deeper.

"Oh God, yes," John let out a groan, breaking away for a needy breath, as he interlaced his fingers in Sherlock's hair again. He wondered about when was the last time that Sherlock had combed his hair but nonetheless, the feeling was as erotic as any experience.

Sherlock deepened the kiss and pulled him into his arms tightly. The enticing musky scent of him, those sounds that John was so well acquainted with, his hot, muggy breath on his neck as Sherlock pressed him to his chest and held him tight while ravaging his mouth however he pleased. Sherlock then let out a broken noise which made John wonder whether he had broken him or. . .

All too soon, John broke away from Sherlock just as Sherlock pushed him away not very gently.

"Jesus Christ!" John collapsed against the desk. His knees wobbled at he tried to stand up straight and flatten his hair in an attempt to look decent. He staggered away from Sherlock, as if there was an invisible field around him that make John's body go haywire with desire.

"Not again—don't know what I was thinking," John stammered incoherently, buttoning his shirt up and tucking it in as he eyed Sherlock cautiously, searching for any signs that might morph into animosity, but Sherlock was just as dazed as he was. John felt oddly proud of that, but that sweet feeling lasted only as long as Sherlock regained his voice.

"I ran away because I did not want to record anymore than what she had said."

John's brain returned back as Sherlock's breathing gradually turned normal. They were here to talk about something else, not themselves. John wanted him here so that he could at least keep this Moriarty away from Sherlock, for valid and invalid reasons both. If it was not for all of that drama, he might have never had Sherlock in his office. He didn't know whether to be grateful to that, "Shit, I took advantage of you, again, I—"

"Not interested," Sherlock declared emphatically as if he knew that John was going to say that, "Not here about that."

No, he just hadn't broken that man. No, he just hadn't hurt him again. Things were still normal. Still good. Still okay, pitiful maybe.

"Oh right. So. . . where's the recorder," he stammered, ignoring his state of hardness but trying to hide it all the same with the talk of normalcy, as if they hadn't gripped each other like animals the moment before, "or the Dictaphone?"

John could have sworn that he saw the slightest amount of uncertainty in Sherlock's eyes before he masked it expertly, "I don't have it."

"Beg pardon?"

"I. . ." Sherlock's gaze rested on his eyes after having roamed around the whole room, "I disposed of it."

John sagged into his chair in relief. So Sherlock had got rid of it. He knew Sherlock would do that. Always the man with the plan, he would recover his steps back well enough.

He glanced at Sherlock, who was still almost watching John with a look that could only be described as a glower, but he blinked and his gaze softened somewhat when John looked at him. Even though the room was clammy from the heating, John gave a shiver in his seat that he hoped was imperceptible to Sherlock. John was surely fooling himself by thinking that he had been doing this for Powers, to get one of his best students justice after being murdered by a psychopath. The truth was much more personal, much more selfish. John never knew before Sherlock just how selfish he really could be.

"Then there's no point talking about it anymore."

"No," Sherlock agreed. John squinted at him. Then why did Sherlock come for at all? Did he know that John's defences would crumble away today? Did he know that John would kiss him today, after twelve days and thirteen hours since they had last kissed?

"So, the conversation is over," John tried to get up, and open the door for Sherlock, but he found he couldn't. His legs were rooted to the ground. Something still felt unfinished, but it was not just what they had been doing some time ago. He still couldn't stop feeling betrayed. He had followed through everything Sherlock had said and asked of him, and yet Sherlock hadn't seen it fit to trust him with this. He wouldn't have said no to recording Soo Lin's confession, would he? In fact, it would've been necessary, but not for the information they gained, just to incriminate Jim Moriarty. No one got to get away after they had killed someone, whether John found them creepy or not.

"Why did you record it in the first place?" John asked him carefully, trying to gauge whether Sherlock was going to fire off yet another defensive reply at that, "I was a witness."

"Can't have you as a witness," Sherlock said coolly, "can't have you supporting me of all people."

That was true, John thought. The last thing he needed was their failed, one-sided attempt at a relationship to come to public and having Sherlock rusticated and John sacked because of it.

"Well, that's. . . thoughtful of you, I s'pose. . ." John said with a half-hearted laugh, "that does make up for you not trusting me enough about. . . recording Soo Lin's confession."

He knew that he had never really given Sherlock any reason to trust him, so he totally expected Sherlock to scoff, but he did not anticipate Sherlock staying quiet about it except for a vague, "We should worry more about Powers' family than Soo Lin. They're burying him tomorrow."

"Oh," John propped his forehead on his forefinger, "Sherlock, please don't tell me you told them about finding his murderer."

Sherlock shrugged, "Alright."

John shook his head, the cascade of emotions that arose when he had kissed Sherlock finally died down, "I did not mean it literally."

"How else was I supposed to make them agree to an autopsy?"

John stared at him for a beat, and then the penny dropped, "You had thought that the pen was the murder weapon, and yet you didn't see it fit to tell me that your beliefs had changed overnight."

Sherlock crossed his arms over his chest, "Technically, it was over three nights—"

"I don't care," John snapped, "What made you change your mind? What made you realize that it was just a decoy?"

John observed Sherlock carefully, sagging back in his chair. Sherlock was surely hiding something from him. He was always keen to share his findings with John, he loved the attention and the wonder that John tried not to express, but it came out nonetheless. Now, he barely told him a thing without asking. However, Sherlock held eye-contact with him expertly, as if nothing were amiss, and John was beginning to think so too, until Sherlock uttered, "I. . . had an intuition."

John narrowed his eyes, "Intuition? You never went by intuition before."

"Of course, the pen was too preposterous. I checked the footage again, whence I found the required evidence."

John decided not to argue. The explanation did have some holes, but it seemed plausible nonetheless. He trusted Sherlock to tell him later, "So. . . Soo Lin's secret is safe then. . . Jesus, I still feel terrible."

Sherlock did not reply, so John took it as his cue to continue. He felt a large weight off his shoulders. He hadn't known just how much he was relying on this Powers incident to communicate with Sherlock, if only a bit.

"I mean, I thought. . . I'd see justice done to that poor boy," he kept saying, crumbling to his irrational impulse to explain his thoughts to Sherlock every time, "He was brilliant. Granted, he could be an arse, but then even you are an arse."

John felt something twist reflexively in his body at the sight of Sherlock's lips tipping upwards in an unconscious smirk, as if they were joined by an invisible union. But Sherlock changed his expression entirely to "not caring", and John felt his spirits dampening slightly. He still couldn't believe that he and Sherlock had kissed just moments ago, and now they were pretending as if there was nothing wrong. The only indication if that was that Sherlock was still gazing at him and John was avoiding it like the plague.

"He didn't deserve to go away like that, without making a mark in the world. One life for another," he spoke on, barely able to hear his own voice. Just like old times, Sherlock studying him, and John avoiding his eyes in the fear that he might give away something of himself that Sherlock wouldn't like.

But Sherlock simply listened on without a trace of emotion in his face. It would've been satisfying to elicit at least one response from him. Where had the Sherlock before that sodding night gone away, the one who thought that there were rules for missing people, the one who didn't know that England did not have a king?

"It shouldn't work like that, should it? What do you think?"

"Oh yeah," Sherlock's voice was hoarse when it came out after having seen silent for minutes, "shouldn't—not like that."

John looked up, and somehow, it happened to be the same moment Sherlock had chosen to start speaking again. John felt his breath stuck in his throat as he met Sherlock's eyes, still glittering a fierce silver. John focused his attention away. He didn't want to come across as staring.

Heart in his mouth, he extended one hand to where Sherlock's lay across the desk. His mind screamed to him to comfort Sherlock, to protect him from all the misgivings, but ultimately, John succeeded in reaching Sherlock's arm with the slightest of touches.

"I believe you, you know," he looked away to hide how much he really did, "you don't have to be worried about me not trusting you."

Sherlock scoffed, but he didn't draw his hand away, "What good would that do me?"

John swallowed the implied rejection, "Just. . . I wanted you to know."

"I thought you had a class in fifteen minutes," Sherlock retorted, "and wouldn't your _precious_ students love to know that their beloved professor had been sucking my face in his office."

John withdrew his hand, in spite of Sherlock looking like he was trying to bite his tongue for saying that. John had just forgotten that Sherlock's ability to escape sentiment by ridiculing it thoroughly would had regenerated over time. He was missing his third class now, and he didn't care. He'd deal with Simpson later. He pursed his lips together tightly and made a last jab at Sherlock's defences, even though it made him feel sick. At least it would make Sherlock stop saying such things.

"And what about James Moriarty?"

Sherlock visibly paled, and John felt an intense desire to punch that Jimmy kid, "What about him?"

"Well, he's the. . ." John paused before saying it, "murderer, isn't he? He used Soo Lin's secret against her and then he threatened you—"

"He can't threaten me," Sherlock declared steadfastly, "No one can threaten _me_."

John raised an eyebrow, "Well, he's got you worked up pretty well. With this. With him around, you're not safe."

"Oh please," Sherlock rolled his eyes, "for once, stop playing big daddy to me—"

"Because someone needs to play big daddy to you, Sherlock," John overrode him, raising his voice just louder than Sherlock's, "He's a goddamned murderer, Sherlock, and he's got connections with the worst ones in the Union, you heard it yourself. God knows what else he might be capable of."

Sherlock shrugged, "He's nothing. Just a ratty little milksop who'll get beaten one of these days."

John wanted to think that Sherlock was right. Perhaps he was, but he still couldn't shake off the feeling that Sherlock was hiding something from him. Maybe John only needed to wait a little more and Sherlock would tell him, if he asked? But not today. Sherlock was probably worked up today. It was obvious that Soo Lin's story had affected him, even moved him.

"Whatever, just. . . don't hide anything from me, alright? Please, for my sake, if not yours."

Sherlock looked stung for a moment, but managed to roll his eyes dramatically, "Look who's talking about hiding."

"What's that supposed to mean?" John said sharply.

"We just kissed, like nothing was. . ." Sherlock trailed off, trying to look bored but this time, even he could not hide his nervousness from John, and that was saying something.

John felt his lips twitching at the memory he would use for the next nights to keep him awake some more, "What's that got to do with hiding?"

"You're right," Sherlock said with a bitter smirk, "More with pretending than hiding."

John leaned backwards in his seat, feeling tired again. He did not know what else to say than repeatedly denying Sherlock, "Sherlock, why can't you just accept that we're not going to work?" he looked away, "I'm—I'm not the right. . . guy for you. We're not right for each other."

There was not a bigger lie that John had ever invented.

"We're not," Sherlock agreed sensibly, and John felt a shard of ice run through his heart, but he wasn't the one to take back his words, "So you better stop pretending that we are."

There was an ear-splitting peal of silence. John's mind screamed to him to stop speaking, but some unseen devilish force kept him and Sherlock engaged in a battle of verbal tennis with neither side admitting defeat. John wasn't sure why they were against each other when the mutual, unspoken opponent was Discomfort.

Ah yes, he had begun the serve, hadn't he? But how. . . John eyed Sherlock from top to bottom while the other man kept drumming his fingers against the desk. The part where Sherlock was a guy was long gone. All uncertainties had fallen, crumbled away like sawdust, ground into nothingness by days of loneliness and pining and mechanical routine that now made up John's life. It was much like his days before Sherlock arrived like a hurricane and dropped bombs on organised thoughts everywhere, leaving nothing but a delicious mess of screwed up raison d'être and conventionalities that had studiously made up John's life, albeit it was now tainted by a need to escape and control his alarmingly rapid heart rate whenever he caught a glimpse of dark hair and pale skin around him.

"Once, you wanted. . ." John knew he was being an utter fool in front of Sherlock, giving away everything and holding it up to him to take care of, "this. Us."

"'Us' is long gone, John," he replied coldly, and John knew that now he was looking at Sherlock as beseechingly as Sherlock had looked at him before he had crushed their relationship in its infancy, "You said it, we're clearly not made for each other."

"Uh. . . yes, of course. Long gone, long gone," John repeated blankly, "But. . . what made you so sure?" he asked, unable to contain his curiosity, just to see the exact error in his ways. What was the exact moment when he had taken Sherlock's affection and twisted it completely into coldness and made the man put layers around him, layers that had always threatened to spring up before but John had always curbed them before they could fully form. The crushing realisation hit him. He had lost Sherlock. Perhaps forever.

"You wouldn't want me for long, when you've got a proper girlfriend," Sherlock said, and his bland voice was unbearable, "Join the dots for yourself. I appeared when you were bored with Jeanette. I was the next best deal and you were having a dry spell, so. . ."

"I wasn't gay," John told himself, just to believe that Sherlock was way more than just a reprieve from a dry spell, and somehow his throat voiced it aloud to Sherlock, "and yet. . ."

"I was different," Sherlock pointed out, "You wanted a different package, and it came in the form of a guy."

"You said it yourself," John cut across him in disbelief at his nonchalant words, "you said I was attracted to you. Was that. . . did you just make it all up to. . .?"

"I'm starting to think that maybe I made you want to—"

"Stop it!" John seethed before he could stop himself, "Don't you dare say that," he looked down, "You did not _make_ me want anything. I know what I want."

"Oh, _really_?" Sherlock cocked his eyebrow.

"Yes, we could've been," John said wistfully, closing his eyes shut tightly and trying to control himself, "but we just got about it the wrong way."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, increasing the probability of John punching him in the face by 70 percent. It was already difficult to get it out, and Sherlock was making it more so, "The wrong way?"

John raised his head to see Sherlock looking at him as if he had sprouted a third head, "Well. . . we should've gone slow," he finished lamely.

"Good heavens," Sherlock let out a faux-amazed gasp, "are you really considering your _student_?"

"Would you rather I kicked your arse out of my office like a football?" John snapped. Sherlock huffed at that, "At any rate, I'm missing my," he glanced at his watch, "third class now."

Sherlock too glanced at his watch, "Oh. . . right, I should get going too."

With that, he expertly slid off his seat, and turned to John. John thought it better than to keep silent at this point, "Nothing came out of this Powers thing."

Sherlock blinked. John saw his one arm attempting to cover up his front and didn't think much of it, "Is that so?"

With that, Sherlock turned around and began towards the door. John bit his lip and then followed wordlessly just as Sherlock was about to open the door.

"Stop," John ordered. Sherlock's fingers stilled on the wood, each nail so perfectly made in spite of Sherlock blatantly neglecting personal care, John noticed. Before he could think any further and pull back, and before Sherlock could ask what it was, he tentatively reached out for Sherlock's face and pressed his lips to his.

He could feel Sherlock stilling in surprise against him, of course he hadn't expected a goodbye kiss, but John held on desperately to Sherlock until he returned the kiss, still not very heated. Without the fight-or-flight rush of all the previous kisses they had shared, John felt shy, kissing Sherlock like that. His heart felt like it could beat right out of his chest.

"What the hell was that?" Sherlock panted when they broke away.

"Not pretending, if only for this moment," John gulped and looked very directly at Sherlock, "I'm not—I never was in a position to hate you at all."

A split second, and then Sherlock leant forward, closing the space between them and trapping John in his arms, his body a shock of warmth and that familiar smell, cigarette ash and iodine and shampoo and _Sherlock_ , filled John’s nostrils again, and Sherlock kissed him with simultaneous urgency and sweetness and it was the single best thing John had ever felt. And everything else, for that prolonged, perfect moment, simply disappeared.

John looked away, not letting his fingers linger on Sherlock's arm as they broke the kiss. Sherlock looked down, the colour on his cheeks endearing. He began once John let go of him "Is this your way to tell me that you're not disappointed in me?"

John squinted at him. What the hell was Sherlock talking about? His expression must have been sufficiently blank for a long time because Sherlock spoke again, "About Soo Lin, because you don't want me to—"

John shook his head, allowing unwelcome space to come between them, "Why are you still thinking about Soo Lin? You've disposed off her confession, it's all done for. This is just. . ." he looked down at their feet before he could see Sherlock's taken aback face and felt heat rising in his cheeks when he saw that Sherlock's sneakers were black today, the same as the colour of his shoes. John gave himself a mental slap for even thinking that, "us."

"But," Sherlock, smiling thinly, painfully and John was dragged back from that one moment of blissful subspace he was in, "it's too late now, isn't it?" he said bitterly. "There's no us. And even if there were, there would be no more time for us."

As John contemplated Sherlock's words, he heard a small click and the sound of the door protesting against its hinges. He looked up to see Sherlock gone and slumped against the wall as his knees gave away, closing the door behind him after looking around in the corridor to ensure that no one had seen Sherlock on his way out.

Just only for a second, after messing up so spectacularly, after spending days in his shell afraid of what he was doing, of what he was feeling, for Sherlock, of Sherlock, of himself, of what he had become, all of that had dissolved into nothingness when Sherlock had taken his lips between his. He traced his fingers over his swollen lips and felt the ghost of the press of Sherlock's teeth still lingering there, once hungry, once sweet. For once, it had felt like everything was fine and did that illusion feel real, all those doubts, and fears, and everything—they were the weakest, the least threatening when Sherlock was close and panting on his skin, but just as Sherlock had let go of him, it had hit him again, all that gamble of long odds, all that bullshit.

All he knew now, after kissing Sherlock, was that he didn't want the bullshit to win, whatever Sherlock said or believed now.

  


* * *

  


Sherlock knew, that however naive it was of him to think so, he had to see Jim. He now knew, after having gone around places and calling everyone an idiot, that he probably was the finest example of one.

He tried to control the multitude of his thoughts and emotions cascading into the mess he had created. His head burnt with frustration, with anger at himself and, most prominent of all, with guilt. His eyes darted from side to side out of PG Science. He looked upwards towards the second floor where John's office was, towards the window, and averted his eyes. Even though John wouldn't be able to read what he was texting, a stupid part of his brain told him that he would come to know all about it somehow.

**_Alley behind heat power lab in 2 minutes. Along with the clip. SH_ **

What was he thinking? How could he have done this? Jim had played Sherlock right into the trap and he had lapped at it as does a cat at cream.

Now that John had hammered it into his brain, he really thought about it. How could he have gotten so swept along with the distraction of the game, the puzzle whilst ignoring the fact that it was just a kid? Soo Lin's brother was just a kid. He tried to stop thinking, he wanted his thoughts to close down like it did in secondary school when he. . . no, he wasn't going to go back that way again. He could only imagine the look of horror on John's face if he did something drastic like that.

He wanted to stop thinking, but it kept coming back to him, the fact that he had destroyed a child's life—or on the verge of destroying, seeing as Jim Moriarty was a complete and utter sadist and that as long as he had even a copy of Soo Lin's confession, the cat was as good as out of the bag.

He had been too rash this time. Too rash, too reckless.

He knew that Soo Lin had her reasons, and the points that John had put down in front of him were all correct and could not be subjected to any further debate. This was why Moriarty wanted him to solve the problem. This was why he kept giving him hints. This was why. Jim knew he'd be insured, he knew Sherlock would have to do what he did not want to, but he had beat Moriarty to his game, hadn't he? He had won, hadn't he? Jim had expected that Sherlock would take pity on Soo Lin and not reveal her secret. Well, he was wrong. Sherlock couldn't be moved so easily.

Sherlock swallowed as he sent the message. He hadn't counted on John's reaction thought, of shock or silence and then of complete, utter faith in Sherlock, that Sherlock hadn't, wouldn't do anything like that. And that impossible man had even promised to Soo Lin that Sherlock won't reveal her secret during the time Sherlock had gone off to do precisely that.

Stupid. He should've known the sort of gambit that Jim was playing. Sherlock should've known that Soo Lin's secret would be darker than a simple drugs' scandal of a few wayward students.

He thought about it, holding life and death in one's palm. He wanted to solve the problem, gain the satisfaction of being right for once. But he'd be tearing apart a kid's life if he did that. Jim knew the dilemma Sherlock would face. How could anyone do this?

Sherlock's head swam. He never knew that he could lie to John that easily. And he never knew that John would buy his lies so easily. But it made sense after all. John had always thought that Sherlock had answers to everything, even though he didn't.

Sherlock licked his lips. They still felt like they had felt when John had first taken them between his and sucked tenderly on them till they became swollen. How dare John kiss him whenever he pleased? How dare John use Sherlock's feelings towards him as blackmail? Sherlock had felt his breath returning to him the moment John closed all distance between them, so urgently that he marvelled how he had been living at all in the past few days. His stubbly cheeks (he hadn't been giving personal care much thought), the scent of his shower gel and deodorant and of coffee, his small compact body and his arms around Sherlock's, it was the sole reason that made Sherlock go back and ask for Soo Lin's confession back from Jim, however naive that sounded. But desperate times did call for desperate measures. Even though they wouldn't work any longer, Sherlock could not have John disappointed in him, could not see his trust broken.

He wished he had never got into the whole Carl Powers thing. Then he'd never have to hear Soo Lin's terrible truth, and neither he'd have to place himself in such a position. He should never have given up Soo Lin's confession to Jim Moriarty. It wasn't safe, now that it was in Jim's hands. And if it came out, only Heaven would know what John would say. Or do.

**_Do you want it back? JM_ **

**_How about we listen to it together? SH_ **

Sherlock's fingers trembled as he sent that text. He could only imagine John's reaction to that extremely blatant invitation. His heart thundered until the reply came.

**_I'm right around the corner. JM_ **

True enough, as he turned around, he heard a scuffling of feet.

"Boy, you're home, aren't you?" Jim squealed in undisguised glee. "I thought you didn't have it in you. Brave li'l boy like you, getting Soo Lin's tears for me in a neat little package, just like I asked of you!"

Sherlock felt himself burning with guilt at the thought of what he had done: given a young girl's life away to a boy to whom none mattered but himself and his ends only. He tried to push away the confronting mental image of John turning away his face from him. He had played with John's trust, lied to John twice in a day. He knew how much John hated lies and yet. . .

"Oh my God," Jim kept saying, true glee and happiness in his eyes, "the way she squealed and just screamed and tried to hold back her tears, my, my. What a performance. How lovely it would be, to have her baby brother sobbing in chorus along with her! Oh yes, that'd be marvellous!"

"Did you bring what I asked you to bring?"

"Oh come on," Jim scoffed, "Like I could ever part with that lovely thing," Sherlock watched, braced for his next move as Jim brought out his phone and waved it towards him. Instantly, Sherlock lunged out for it, catching Jim unawares and taking the phone in his grasp. Jim shot him an amused look.

"Somebody's excited."

"Yes," Sherlock smirked as he took out the memory card of the phone. Jim had been overconfident, not thought that Sherlock would change his mind and come to retrieve the recording clip he had given up to Jim when he had run off from the John and Soo Lin, "Goodbye."

And he got out of there, sending Jim howling with high-pitched laughter. He could laugh for all Sherlock could care. He knew he had been stupid and desperate enough for the day, but he really couldn't stand John looking down at him.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't until Sherlock was in his room, the door shut behind him securely that he decided to have a look into the memory card. It did struck him odd that Jim had not uttered a word of protest when Sherlock had snatched the memory card. But then he had left in a quite a hurry and taken him by surprise. He could still remember the one moment where their fingers had almost touched and burnt against each other, like fire quenching fire. Jim had laughed, and Sherlock had never felt so humiliated before.

He told himself that he was making amends and preventing the damage he had almost caused to Soo Lin. He sort of sympathised with her. He knew to what ends one could go to when a loved one was involved.

It had arrived him nowhere, the case with Carl Powers. It had only been for the worse. He had meant to tell John had he had handed Soo Lin's confession to Jim Moriarty but the strong reaction that he had got from John before that backpedalled him into lying. Granted that John had kissed him, but those kisses were probably nothing but fake, only a way to blackmail Sherlock into not revealing Soo Lin's secret to the metro and getting her arrested.

But the kiss had felt real. John's desperation, his want to show Sherlock just how much he desired him even though he was scared. . .

Sherlock shook those thoughts away, hardening his heart. John had nothing for him. They had established that. There were no feelings behind that kiss, simply goodwill towards John's _beloved_ students. Prune everything away.

He double clicked the drive and rooted through the folders till he found the little clip buried in there, pristine as the time he had created it. He exhaled gratefully. Until it hit him that Jim had probably listened to it, if he had to go by the way he was describing Soo Lin's sobs.

And probably to John's voice in the background as well.

At a dash, Sherlock double-clicked on the clip and waited with bated breath. The overused laptop was taking its own sweet time to respond. He had messed up, double-time.

"Come on," he growled when it felt to Sherlock like time had slowed down. He gritted his teeth in frustration as the file loaded slowly. He went back to the directory had discovered, to his utter dismay, that Moriarty had indeed tampered with the file. The time stamp was later than Sherlock had began the recording.

_". . . The medication, please. . ."_

Sherlock's distinctive growl came from the recording. His shoulder muscles sang with tension as he remained stiff against his bed, barely moving, barely breathing. Why did he keep underestimating Moriarty? Why could he just not accept that Moriarty was better than him? Clever, charming, everything that he was not.

_"What medication? What are you talking about?"_

Sherlock fast-forwarded it till he could clearly hear the mellow tenor of John's voice.

_"As a faculty of this university. . . "_

Sherlock groaned in his palms, wished for the thousandth time he had not got involved into this. For someone who knew John's voice intimately, every quiver of every syllable of it, the exact points where one could distinguish the Cockney overlapping with John's natural Scottish accent, it would be obvious that this was John Watson speaking and no one else.

Obvious to Sherlock, and nobody else, Sherlock thought. He had taken it upon himself to personally acquire that most important bit of knowledge. He went through the entire clip, keeping an ear for 'John' or 'Watson' anywhere. Moriarty bore Soo Lin no ill and he had done that sort of thing to her. What would he do when he found out about Sherlock—and John.

Thankfully, the clip had literally no mention of John's name in anyway. Sherlock slumped against his bed as relief—utter relief—flooded him. He was now beginning to see the elaborate weave that Moriarty had woven. Getting Carl killed by Soo Lin, making Sherlock solve the puzzle, only for a few sobs?

There was more to this equation.

As Sherlock was about to close the clip, he noticed that a few extra seconds were remaining. Of course, Jim had tampered with the clip. What had he done?

"Sherlock, yoo hoo!" came Jim's voice and the hairs at the nape of his neck practically stood up in attention. This was what he had done, probably, "You've figured it now, haven't you? Naughty, naughty boy!"

Sherlock squinted. What did Jim mean?

"Never took you the type to go after _older men_ , you know," his high-pitched voice startled and ultimately made Sherlock's blood run cold in his veins, "professors and such. . . . You always want things to be so clever, don't you see Sherlock? This was never about the murder," Jim laughed, "this was all about you!"

Sherlock gulped, feeling a trickle of perspiration down his temple—was it sweat or water? It was all too much to process as once.

"I will find out your professor, Sherlock," Jim's voice crooned, "Until then, ciao!"

With that, Sherlock stared at the black screen, his fingers trembling almost imperceptably. He shut the lid of the laptop, pulled his covers onto his head and stayed like that for a long time, as if that action could alone tune out all the things that the rest of the world seemed to be saying to him.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!!! (literally and in the sense of the story as well. . . in a manner of speaking)
> 
> **Warnings:** Dub-con (again, in a manner of speaking)

John knew what it looked like. John knew what he looked like. God help him, he was desperate.

The streets around him were completely empty. Of course they had to be. It was three at bloody night. Of course the only people there would be were sleepy patrol constables past their shifts and only junkies and smugglers perhaps. Muggers and rapists tucked in for the evening and serial killers wouldn't have woken up yet, as Sherlock would've said, John thought with a bitter chuckle.

He knew the last time that had prompted him to do something like this while he was sober. The exact time of the clock, his degraded mental state and then indulging into the most selfish sex that Sherlock somehow made into something sweet and lovely and absolutely precious. John was almost in that same mental state now, if not exactly that. Sherlock's words, his few but _damning_ words kept revolving in the back of his head and John knew he was making excuses because frankly none of it was Sherlock's fault (maybe except yes, Sherlock hinting at them screwing around at the beginning of their liaison almost toed the line of sexual harassment) that John was walking down a light drizzle from the his house to Sherlock's flat on foot. Again. Because it was three of bloody clock and he couldn't stand the sight of what was supposed to be his home. Not with Sherlock nowhere.

No, this time he told himself. Sherlock wasn't the root of what had prompted him out. Even though he was, albeit in an indirect way. Because Sherlock was all that remained of his rapidly disintegrating life and even that part of John was perishing to pieces—perhaps had already perished.

_But it's too late now, isn't it? There's no us. And even if there were, there would be no more time for us._

He paused in an alley to get a hold of himself as Sherlock's words—those terrible, terrible words—looped over themselves in John's mind. A breath down his nostrils hurt so horribly and his heart protested against the mere act of it. He had to clench his teeth and his fists stubbornly, as if willpower alone could defeat it and contain it within his skin, this utterly barbaric notion to hurt, just hurt _something_ , even himself for that part. Every nerve in his body rebelled in him to just collapse in that dirt alley and just cry, cry his guts out. Just one drop of tear—his body coaxed—and all the burden and the tension would vanish into air and he'd be able to function once more. It was unhealthy to keep it within himself. There was this absurd, blindingly intense, screaming ache in his spine and John wanted to bang his head against the wall so hard so that it stopped hurting him, if only for a short time.

He pressed his back against the wall and punched it stubbornly, closing his eyes tightly shut so that it wouldn't fall. He bit on his tongue resolutely. His cheekbones hurt from the effort. He wanted to cry out loud and he wanted the whole of London to hear him weeping, perhaps even all the people who were even remotely associated with St. Bart's and all the schools and the universities in the world, just so they'd know what it felt like, being in John's place. He felt he deserved the pain. If only Sherlock hated him, it would've been so simple and so crude and maybe then he'd stop feeling so awful.

But no, Sherlock being the perfect righteous human being that he was, he still condescended to touch and _kiss_ him, let alone hate him.

"Oh God!" John let out a whimper, punching the wall again when one particularly stubborn tear made its way out of the prison of his eyelids. He punched the wall again—and again. With his fists and his feet as he slowly lost control of himself, he punched at the wall whenever he felt the need to exchange with physical pain the emotional one—but he didn't break down. He muffled his agony behind the back of his hand and bit on it harshly, as if that could make him forget everything else. He wasn't weak, he told himself. He had to submit his thesis to the university newsletter and it had also caught the attention of one of his old senior professors from King's. He had no time—or place—to be weak.

He buried the treacherous ones in the crook of his arm as he felt himself relaxing in spite of his wishes. The rest, the drizzle washed away from his face as he walked on, on and on, not really sure what he was feeling more: anger or agony. And before whatever giant beast he was sure had followed him from his house could catch up, he knocked on the door.

When Sherlock finally opened his door, John made sure that he didn't meet Sherlock's eyes—just to ensure that he had more time to collect his frail self. He hid his bruised knuckles in the pocket of his jeans, anything for Sherlock not to see that and question his sanity. That was the last thing he needed.

As soon as he caught the first sight of Sherlock's feet—still bare, blue and greenish varicose veins rising on the pale skin and miniscule hair on his toes—John was transported back to another time, a couple of weeks ago (had it really been only a couple of weeks, it felt like a lifetime). The inner vulnerable part of him wanted to crumble down, cry at his feet, beg for forgiveness and stay there until Sherlock decided to kick him out.

For Sherlock's part, the door was partly open, as if Sherlock had resorted to his battle stations, with the door as a barrier between them if John attempted something untoward. Clearly, Sherlock was reminiscing the same moment as John. How could he still trust John to not appear at his doorstep drunk and pissed and shout insults at him? There was something heavy and fragile in his chest and yet he felt lighter than he did hours ago.

Neither of them spoke anything until Sherlock cleared his throat.

"Joh—professor." He didn't sound startled. Oddly. Like he had been expecting John. Did he say that purposefully, just to hurt John?

John shooed those thoughts away. Sherlock was many things, but never cruel.

John finally forced his eyes upwards, wanting to ask out aloud _Why're you calling me that?_ He knew his eyes were probably red—they had been red for the past few weeks so Sherlock really couldn't figure out how he'd almost had a breakdown in a dirty alley. Sherlock looked blank, completely blank and it made John's position all the more intimidating. Still, Sherlock relaxed and tried to give John what was a very horrible placating smile tinged with worry along the edges. Still trusting, still hoping. Was that the advantage of being Sherlock? Was he so immune and aloof that he'd never be hurt, no matter what John did? It couldn't be. It shouldn't be. Sherlock, for all his high and mighty ways, was a human being after all.

"Can—can I. . .?" John felt his voice breaking and he trailed off, unable to continue. He had to stay strong and brave, for his sake. For Sherlock's sake. He felt tears sting his eyes again and he lowered his head to hide them from Sherlock.

"Come inside," Sherlock whispered. John was only aware of Sherlock stepping back and then closing the door quietly, "We can't make much ruckus. Mrs. Hudson is a very light sleeper."

John knew what Sherlock meant. _If you're here for sex again, here's my very convenient excuse for not wanting to indulge in the bodily exchange of fluids and false words said in a frenzy of intimacy._

Once the door was shut, John—ready to tear screaming out of his skin—turned to look at Sherlock. Sherlock simply looked back at him.

"You weren't asleep—" was all John but croaked.

"Cut the small talk," Sherlock said dismissively. The bruises in John's knuckles hurt harder as he clenched his fists inside his pockets.

"I apologise," Sherlock said softly when John couldn't find his words, "that must have been rude."

John couldn't look away. The nerve of this man, apologising to John of all people. He felt a serious terror of breaking down in Sherlock's arms. What would Sherlock do? Would he hold him? Would he stand there awkwardly while John wet his t-shirt? Would he pull away quietly while John tried to cling on to him ungainly?

"I—I—just—" John began explaining why he was here. What was he supposed to say without sounding like a needy five-year-old?

"And when I said that Mrs. Hudson is a light sleeper," Sherlock overrode him as usual, "it was your cue to climb the stairs towards my flat. I think I have a first aid thing somewhere. Always a risk of infection, that."

John stiffened, but wasn't surprised. Sherlock always knew. He always knew everything. He felt strangely comforted by that, by his deductions. He gazed towards the banister, where they had shared their first kiss before Sherlock had pinned him. . . He felt so uncertain of himself. What if he lost control? What if he ruined them again?

He looked at Sherlock again. What else was possibly there to ruin?

John cleared his throat as quietly as he could and tiptoed upwards with Sherlock behind him. There was something distinctively homey about 221B Baker Street although he really hadn't had the time to appreciate the place during his last time here. The flat had loud, splashy wallpaper and creaking stairs. Sherlock’s things were strewn about in such disarray that it seemed perhaps hurricane-force winds had blown through only moments before his arrival. A laptop was open on the desk and the only light source was the lamp behind where Sherlock had perhaps been sitting. There was a human skull on the mantelpiece, and a bovine skull—wearing noise-cancelling headphones, John noted—mounted on the living room wall.

He had never seen anyplace more wonderful.

John stood there, in the middle of the sitting room. When he raised his chin to look at Sherlock, he found the man in the arch of the doorway looking at John's feet. John felt himself turning a dangerous shade of crimson when he realised where he was standing upon. He felt his throat closing and a painful constrict in his windpipe and he stepped away, trying to hide his pale face gone horribly red.

John felt himself gravitating to the spot. Now that he was here, every place, every spot in the flat reminded him of what he'd done, what they'd done. He was truly surprised that Sherlock still chose to live there while John lamented about the emptiness of his own place.

"Erm. . ." John began in a choked voice, looking around aimlessly at anything that wasn't Sherlock at a thankful distance from him, and then found one, the one that had struck him as odd even the last time, "it's. . . a skull."

Sherlock nodded and mumbled. John felt some of the tension in the room dissipate, "Yes, it's. . . just an old friend."

"Erm. . ." John glanced back at the skull, but Sherlock did not elaborate and John had to wonder if that was supposed to mean that the skull was Sherlock's friend, or that the skull was Sherlock's friend's. He looked down again, at the elephant in the room.

"Is it appropriate then?" he shuffled to his feet. A glee as odd as the sight of the skull seated there bloomed in John's chest and he couldn't comprehend why, "keeping a skull on the mantelpiece?"

"Oh yes. My landlady adores him," he drawled blandly. It was hard to tell whether he was joking or not.

John peeped closer, "It's a. . . her, not him. Do you even listen to what I drone on during my lectures?"

Sherlock looked like he had swallowed a lemon, "Oh. . . yes."

Silence fell again. John stood there, feeling terribly out of place. He looked down at the spot again, feeling heat returning to his cheeks at the thought that if he kneeled down and pressed his nose to it, he might still be able to smell them, however preposterous the idea sounded like. Although that would only be if the carpet hadn't been washed since then. John almost staggered backwards at the possibility that. . . He looked questioningly at Sherlock.

"Did you ever—?"

"No."

"Not even once—?" he gestured to the carpet disbelievingly.

"No," he looked away, and then added, "I assure you it's nothing sentimental."

_Why would it be_ , John thought, his heart skipping a beat, _it must decisively have been the worst thing that anyone could have done to you_.

"Erm," John cleared his throat, taking out his fists. There was no point hiding them from Sherlock anymore. Sherlock nodded sharply and set out towards what John remembered was the bathroom. He watched Sherlock's tall, slim figure disappearing into the bathroom and then snatched glimpses of the flat in his urgency. He looked at the two armchairs, and the sofa. None of them seemed contented enough to seat him.

Soon it was obvious that Sherlock did not keep all his first aid in one place. He was rummaging all over the house with a bottle of antiseptic in his grip. He found the cotton on top of a not-so-sterilised-looking chemical equipment. The bandages had somehow ended up beside the coffee jar. John had half a mind to not use them. He felt like a six-year-old boy who had come home crying to his unorganised mama after having fallen down in the dusty street.

"Not much," he confessed as he came to John with his findings, "but sterilised. I can guarantee that."

"One can only hope," John said, as Sherlock handed them over, "can I sit on the—erm. . .?"

"Oh the sofa," Sherlock said, "I'll join you shortly."

With that, Sherlock made his way to the table and put his laptop on charging and then to sleep. John stared after him and then set down the things on the table, settling down into the dip that Sherlock had probably made into the sofa. In a flat that smelled of Sherlock, was _Sherlock_ , John felt as safe and warm as he had once with Sherlock’s arms around him, with Sherlock’s voice whispering his name in his ear.

"Look, I just wanted to—well actually, Sherlock, erm, can I—" John eyed him shyly, "can I stay here? Just for tonight? I promise I won't be a. . ." John tried to bring up a word that put it all in a nutshell. Sherlock sent him a prompting look.

". . . an inconvenience."

Sherlock's face settled into something granite as he wordlessly sat down next to John, "Well, I have spare room upstairs but there isn't any bed. It's just full of Mrs. Hudson's old stuff. So, you. . . can take the sofa perhaps, if you don't mind."

John nodded mutely, not trying to think that he had been entertaining the hope of. . . best not think about it anymore.

Sherlock looked down at John nursing his hands, "Really foolish of you to do something like that to yourself, professor. No, no, don't give me that stupid look. I know you punched something hard and rough, plain as day. You couldn't have got into a fight, not at this time of night, the wound's still fresh. Muggers and rapists are tucked in for the evening and serial killers wouldn't have woken up yet."

John dabbed the liquid on the still-somewhat-fresh wounds, feeling a wistful smile tugging at the corners of his lips at Sherlock's words, "You can go back to what you were reading, Sherlock. I can sort myself out."

Sherlock looked away and John winced at the stinging, "You're still mentally distressed," Sherlock's voice invaded in, and oh, is it a welcome diversion, "over the Powers' case, obviously. You're unable to sleep, so you've come to the other perpetrator in the need for solace. It's understandable and perfectly natural. Nothing to be ashamed of."

John blinked, trying to recall who Powers was before his brain kicked in.

"We're talking about me," John said gruffly, trying to wrap the bandage around his knuckles, "not you."

Sherlock stiffened immediately and backpedalled into self-preservation.

"I wasn't thinking about Powers," Sherlock said, a little too quickly, and then he cleared his throat, "i assure you."

If John had been even a percent of his normal self, he'd have seen Sherlock's unprecedented anxiety as something he'd definitely want to probe questions about until Sherlock shut off like clams guarding a pearl. But now, John dismissed it as he fumbled clumsily with his shaking hands.

"Soo Lin is safe, Sherlock," John said earnestly and he barely registered Sherlock blanching, "You don't have to keep worrying about her and her brother. Not that I'm not upset about all of it. . . but you were very brave today, keeping her secret like that," when Sherlock looked unsure, John tried to make his voice sound reassuring, "I'm sure Moriarty would get his comeuppance for doing something as horrible as that. You don't worry, Sherlock." _Don't worry. I won't let that bastard get to you again._

At that, he furiously wrapped the bandage around him knuckles.

"Here," Sherlock took his hands in his to stop him when John winced again, "allow me."

Sherlock's hands were careful, albeit not very gentle. The rough pads of his fingers brushed against John's red knuckles every time as he tied the bandage a little too firmly. His fingers moved across his, tracing the inner palms quietly. It was a curious hypnotic motion and John found it hard to concentrate on anything other than that.

"I thought you'd have a terrible bedside manner," John said wryly, transfixed on the sensations.

"Technically, this isn't bedside," Sherlock remarked and held his gaze as he covered John's smaller hands with his own. There was something there, in his eyes, something seeking confirmation and John nonverbally nodded his consent.

A split second, and then Sherlock raised the back of his hands to his lips and John closed his eyes, feeling his heart swell when he felt Sherlock's lips brush against his bandaged knuckles. And then again. And then again. And again. Every time Sherlock did that it was like being lifted up a crest and it didn't matter to John when Sherlock held his hand in a way that stung the wound. There was a clawing sensation under his skin that somehow felt pleasant. Everything else felt so distant and unimportant. Even this time, taking a breath down to his lungs was just as painful when Sherlock let go of his hand.

John slowly opened his eyes, recovering from the sensual act.

"Why?" was all John could croak, blinking rapidly and breathing deeply. _Why me? Why not someone else who won't be afraid to tell you how much they love you?_ There was so much more needed to be said but John couldn't bring himself to say it.

Sherlock continued to hold his gaze and John could sense him coming closer. The raw scent of him seemed to intensify for a moment and John leaned in far too late, for Sherlock pulled away. John's lips felt terribly denied.

"I have to tell you something," Sherlock looked away. John's heart sank to a pit. This was never good. But still he put on a smile, for Sherlock's sake.

"Okay."

When Sherlock hesitated, John tried to face the way Sherlock was looking, "Is it something bad?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to say it, and then abruptly closed it, and then gulped, "Don't sleep here, if you wouldn't mind."

John blinked, collecting Sherlock's meagre first aid, anything to deflect the magnitude of his words. Damn him for being polite and so thick to ask, even if he knew that that wasn't what Sherlock had wanted to say.

"Would that be. . . proper?"

"I can't see why not," said he, standing up, "This isn't the Victorian era."

John smiled weakly, not able to believe how light he actually felt, so light that he couldn't help but blurt it all out, "They'd have burnt you at stake if you had been born then. _Sherlock Holmes in 19th century_ without your phone or internet and stuck with only books _._ I could just crack up."

"There'd have been so many more things to explore and discover," Sherlock said wistfully.

They glanced at each other and their smiles as well as the easy camaraderie they had fallen into faded away. John tugged at his jacket, "Do you have something to. . .?" he trailed off.

Sherlock nodded and it was raw, watching him like that, all cold and distant with barriers high up sprung from John's rejection, "I'll get something for you."

With that, Sherlock turned around and walked off towards in the direction of his bedroom. John wondered if he should follow. He wondered if that would be a major breach of privacy. It was only after a glance from Sherlock that he decided to follow.

He knew that the sheets were white. Olive green, John noted the wallpaper of the room he had spent the best and the worst night of his life in. He couldn't quite meet Sherlock's eyes as he wordlessly handed him his spare pyjamas.

"Are you. . . going to stay up?" John ventured.

"For a while," Sherlock smoothened the sheets even if it wasn't needed, John noticed with a pang, "I have been working on an assignment whose due date passed a week ago."

John gave him an exasperated look at that, "Sherlock, how many times have I told you not to—?"

He broke off. Sherlock wasn't smiling, but he seemed smug about John's predictable reaction. There he was again. The old Sherlock, he was coming back, just there. . . so close to the smile John hadn't seen since. . .

A blink. And he was gone again.

"I'll just change. Which side do you take?"

Sherlock frowned, "Sorry what?"

"Which side of the bed do you sleep in?" John asked, trying not to turn red like a schoolgirl in spite of his heart doing flip flops in his chest.

"When I stay up late reading, to the left because there's the lampshade. Otherwise to the right because it's closer to the door. Why would I have a pre-determined side?"

John stared at him for a beat, "No reason. You wouldn't."

Sherlock threw him a suspicious look, and then retreated to the sitting room. John got a good look at his surroundings as he changed into Sherlock's spare pyjamas that depressively smelled of only detergent and nothing else. He couldn't help but run his fingers over his knuckles as he took in everything significant and non-significant about the small niche that Sherlock inhabited. He couldn't help but smile at the periodic table chart hung near the window like the poster of a world famous footballer.

_Would I really want the bullshit to win? Over us?_

_There's no us._

_And even if there were, there would be no more time for us._

Trying not to think anymore, he tucked himself as noiselessly as possible into the sheets that were somehow warm and smelled of Holmes. He took the left side seeing as the mattress was dipped on the right, spending some time letting his hand linger over the side that Sherlock used more often, as it seemed. He was aware how gauche it would be. He and Sherlock had slept together in that very bed, in all senses of the word. He had seen Sherlock at his best and at his worst in there, undone with pleasure and want. Their arms entwined around each other, holding, anchoring, clawing. Sherlock on top with his mouth hung open and looking straight, fearlessly into John's eyes, John pounding into him from bottom as he called out Sherlock's name while keeping their foreheads joined. It sent a shiver through him, that sort of intimacy.

He turned to look at Sherlock's books. He had never thought that Sherlock, a staunch supporter of the Internet and instantly accessible information, would have such a. . . wide range of books. There was even a copy of the Bible in there. There was a globe on the top of a cabinet there. John felt like he was seeing an entirely new side of the man as he lay in foetal position, as small as he could make himself.

He tried to curl into a smaller space and lay there, eyes wide open in the almost-dark. He wanted Sherlock to know that he hadn't been expecting sex or anything remotely that. He was just clinging on to the only thing he had left, if only disintegrating.

A single tear stained the pillow as John slowly felt the old dejection and agony rise back to the surface. He stayed silent through it, not wanting any stupid unmanly cries to reach Sherlock. He buried his face in the pillow and tried to control himself, pretending that the pillow was Sherlock. He felt like his insides had been wrenched through his throat and spread out and trampled and shoved back down and _fuck you, the world_ , he thought furiously, for making him such that he couldn't even remember how Sherlock's lips felt against his or his bruised knuckles, even if through the barrier of a cloth. He felt so powerless, so _fucking_ powerless, not to be able to stop the overflow of emotions through him as he balled the sheet into his mouth and bit down on it. Was he still the man Sherlock would leave university for? He wanted to be, but he wasn't sure whether he still was.

He wasn't sure when he heard the door open and close behind him. John's heart sped up as he heard a rustling of the sheets and a soft squeak and dip of the mattress. He gulped down, trying not to tremble with the effort of not crying. Sherlock was motionless somewhere beside him. John wasn't sure how much distance he would have to cross before he could touch Sherlock again.

John did not take a single breath, afraid that he would be heard sniffling. Sherlock's breaths were inaudible too. John only wondered how much time it would be before one of them gave in, even though he knew that he would be the first to give in. He always gave in to Sherlock.

If only he had given in when it mattered. Sherlock could've still been the same, with no impenetrable barriers around him or so. . . cold. John sometimes felt that he had killed a small vital part of Sherlock's spirit with his fear and now he only saw the vanquished man who focussed only on protecting himself.

"I disgust you, don't I?" he whispered quietly to the dark. It was probably the most honest thing he had ever said to Sherlock.

"Go to sleep, professor. you might say things you'll regret later," Sherlock advised.

_Maybe I want to regret it,_ John wanted to say. _Maybe then I'd finally stop hoping that I'd get a happy ending with you after a hundred years when we're both corpses rotting in a cemetery and then maybe I'd just let the world do whatever the fuck it pleases and finally tell you that I can never hate you like you believe me to. I love you. So fucking much. That even if the start of our relationship, from Day One had been wrong in every single way I can think of, I_ had _got swept along with you and that is all that matters to me._

Instead, all he could manage was, "You wouldn't know what I would say."

"I'm no mind reader," Sherlock said, and there was a strain of tension in his voice that John couldn't decipher why—but his own distress seemed far too great, "but I can make certain assumptions on the similarity of. . . situations from before."

_Maybe Sherlock was right. Maybe I'd regret coming over here tomorrow. Maybe I'd lose control of myself again. Maybe I should just go back to my little flat, spend the night twisting in my covers, spend the night in tension about whether Dr. Greer would give my paper a positive feedback so that I don't have to spend every wakeful moment thinking about a man who's here, so near and yet so far away at the same time._

"And what assumptions are that?"

"Something happened to you, apart from the Powers' thing as you claim so religiously."

John was quiet for a moment, and then said, "Today, in my office, you said. . ." John took a sharp intake of breath, "that 'us' is long gone."

When Sherlock did not reply, letting a prompting silence take his response, John took it as his cue to ask further, "Did you mean it?"

Another sigh. "Does it make any difference now?"

_Are you fucking kidding me?_ "To me, yes." _I wouldn't delude myself by thinking that it would for you too._ "I—I hurt you a lot."

For once, Sherlock did not reply. For once he stayed quiet and unmoving, and John feared that he might become a blabbering mess if Sherlock didn't stop him soon.

"What I—"

"Need I remind you," Sherlock said, "you have already said these things. You've already apologised."

John gaped at the dark, "That was enough for you?"

"Logically speaking, you were remorseful of your actions and you tried your best to remedy it. That consists of a properly put and meant apology," Sherlock sounded like he was chanting off the Book of Life from the section of "What An Apology Must Be Like?", "so it's obligatory of me to accept it."

John shook his head. It felt weird, talking yet not facing Sherlock, "There are no rules and parameters for an apology, Sherlock."

"There must be," Sherlock said dismissively as if he had no idea that what he was saying was utter bollocks, "how else would you tell a false one from a real one?"

John didn't know how to respond to that without offending Sherlock, "Does this mean that I'm forgiven?"

"I accepted your apology," Sherlock's tone was cutting and clinical and it set John on edge.

"But am I forgiven? After," John looked away, "taking advantage of you in my office. Twice."

Sherlock did not reply and John took it as his cue to go on, "When you said that we were over and that there was no more time left for us, I felt—" he bit down harshly on his lip but he had to get it out, even if it was the most difficult task for him, "I was. . . well—"

He collected himself in a second, "I was terrified."

He let out a breath. He definitely didn't feel any lighter, telling Sherlock that. He braced himself for any number of possible reactions. Non-resistance. Derision. Accusations.

Out came Sherlock's incredulous voice, "You were terrified?!"

"Well," John began uncertainly, "when you put it that way. . ."

"You're never terrified," Sherlock retorted in an accusing tone, "You're always in control."

_You're the one to talk_ , John thought.

"No, I think I'm capable of being terrified, Sherlock. Look, I told you, remember the day you made me help you getting those footages illegally—"

"It wasn't illegal _per se_ —"

"No, it was. It was illegal, Sherlock. Anyway, that's not my point. That day, in my office," he took in a deep breath, "I told you that this—us—isn't over for me."

"It was merely out of guilt," Sherlock declared emphatically, "and out of various other sentiments that aren't vaguely close to what you thought—"

"I wasn't capable of feeling guilty at that point, Sherlock," John whispered to the dark, gripping his pillow tighter. Letting his emotions zone out and letting logic that Sherlock valued take over, because it was all that could take the anguish away, "What I did was cruel, yes. But at that moment, I thought. . . I thought I was the sensible one, because I was supposed to _be_ the sensible one. . . and I—I regret letting my fear take over us. It's the only thing I've felt all these days. Fear." _And torture._

"So. . ." Sherlock sounded uncertain, "you're—you're not distressed about Soo Lin?"

"Fuck Soo Lin and fuck everyone else!" John lashed out, and then quietened, "Sorry."

Something that sounded like a sigh of relief escaped from Sherlock's lips, "Oh, I thought, well. . . obviously. . . if you might have been wondering what I did with—I mean, when I disposed the recording off. . ."

John inhaled slowly after his outburst, "It affected you a lot, didn't it?"

A beat, and then, "What?"

"The Powers. . . thing. I know you're sick hearing this, but bad things ultimately happen to bad people. Moriarty, karma would catch up with what he's done. Pricks like him always get their comeuppance in some way or another."

Silence fell around them, their first conversation entirely forgotten. John waited and waited for Sherlock's response, but none came and John thought that Sherlock had finally fainted from exhaustion after all the events of the day. And then—

"You wanted to enlist, didn't you?"

John froze. The fragile feeling in his chest was replaced by a heavy thud of his heart, "What are you saying?"

John could hear rustling of sheets and he felt heat rising in his chest again when he thought that this time, Sherlock would be facing him, if only his back. Sherlock spoke as if a train was chasing him, "Longing for excitement. Dislike towards a sense of alienation, favouring group work than individual. Preferring quick, intuitive thinking instead of long periods of introspection required of an active researcher. Jumping into action without a properly thought-out plan. Good time and interpersonal management skills—"

John closed his eyes at Sherlock treating him as a mere puzzle, not revelling at all in the not-so-vague compliment, "Sherlock—"

"—and now, the last piece of the puzzle, hero worship. You battle every day out at St. Bart's, that's what keeps you going—"

"Sherlock—"

"—you were made to be a soldier, John. How do you live here? How _can_ you live here?"

John gulped, feeling like he was steps away from seething, "Stop talking, okay?"

There was another moment of silence, which Sherlock finally broke with a tentative call out.

"Can I. . ." Sherlock began behind him, and John was sure that all activity in his body had stopped in attention, "Can I still call you John? Earlier, it just. . . slipped."

John gulped. Even such a simple request meant the world to him. Something about Sherlock's tone told John that the man had suddenly had a revelation that altered he way he looked at John. His voice wasn't as cold and distant now. There was something close to reverence in him.

"Ahem, I meant that when we're alone. In private. I wouldn't call you John in front of your students and peers."

"Does that mean that we will get to be alone again?"

There was no reply. John cursed himself for allowing himself to be hopeful again. Of course Sherlock wouldn't want to anymore. Sherlock had said that they were over. He was probably tired of John being a coward, and now only consented to show his dormant affection through small, neutral gestures.

He heard the sheets rustling again and a blast of sudden warmth as he felt Sherlock looming over him. For a stupid second he thought Sherlock was going to climb atop him and John withdrew in response only to see the lampshade beside him flick on. John caught a glimpse of Sherlock's granite-like expression, pale skin and dark hair and John wanted to follow. . .

"Turn and look at me."

John refused to comply, gritting his teeth. He hastily rubbed his tears off.

"Turn and look at me, John."

Reluctantly, John turned. Sherlock's hair was attractively mussed up. Soft shadows played across his face which, as it had been of lately, betrayed nothing at all. The space between them was so small that it seemed unrealistic, so easy that John could keep a hand in neutral territory and it would touch Sherlock's. They stayed still, facing each other, holding each other's gaze. John didn't know that he still had the strength to do that.

"I'd never find you disgusting," he said quietly.

John looked away stubbornly, "I'm glad I didn't go. Was a fleeting fancy anyway."

"We both know that's not the truth. At any rate, fighting is what you do all the time. There, you'd have been fighting armies, here you're just fighting your daily existence."

John gave him a humourless smile, feeling sudden anger rise up his spine like magma. He tried to tell himself that he had no right to be angry at Sherlock but his inner beast didn't listen, "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I might not, but I think you do," he said, and John blinked, "You fight for the life you lead, and hence you fight yourself, and in the process you fight me and all your sentiments concerning me. It—it makes a lot of sense. . . You've become such that you'll fight anything that's remotely not the life you've learnt to lead because you're afraid of the potential. Not many people have the perseverance to live a life that's not them—"

John knew that he was looking murderous at this point, for Sherlock backtracked on his words furiously, "I'm. . . aware that I might have unintentionally struck a sensitive nerve in you—"

John fumed, clenching his teeth, "Oh yeah?"

"I can see that you're. . . angry now."

"That's good deduction," he said, now gritting his teeth. Sherlock looked like a cornered animal, "I don't even know why I thought I—you know, never mind," he pulled out of Sherlock's covers with a clear of his throat, his entire body protesting at the loss of the shock of warmth that was Sherlock's presence. He realised belatedly that Sherlock was right because that was exactly how he was acting and thinking now, but he was too angry to care.

"John—" Sherlock pronounced.

With a last glance at Sherlock's languid figure now growing tense with every passing second, John gathered his somewhat drenched clothes pooled on the floor, "I think the sofa would be fine for me."

"It's—it's full of my things!" Sherlock burst out, "Toxic things! No one's idiotic enough to bother cleaning it at this hour."

"I'll manage," John said with difficulty and opened the door of their—Sherlock's—bedroom. When he arrived at the sofa, it was spotlessly clean with none of Sherlock's said things. He wanted to curb the tendril of lingering hope that Sherlock had wanted him in his bed with him, but he found that he couldn't.

And this time, if the misery and the reproach returned, he didn't blame the world for not getting to spend the night beside Sherlock.

 

* * *

 

"I want that tape back!"

For the tiniest bit, Sherlock thought he saw Jim's eyes widen in excitement and wonder when Sherlock slammed him against the backdoor near the abandoned stairwell of the East Building. For only a bit, and it was gone. Gone with the faintest trace of the cologne that a working-class boy like Jim couldn't have been wearing.

"Oh, I knew that all the act of _Molly's devoted girl friend_ was all sham," he laughed gleefully, "You're a dominatrix. Ah, _careful_! I like your hands on me, not on my collar."

"Don't be a bore," Sherlock spat. Up close, Jim's lips looked pink, plush, and he had to look away as always, "it's served its use. Nothing good will come out of exposing Soo Lin now, now that you think you know some hidden secret of mine."

"Oh yes," Jim shook Sherlock's hands off him and yawned, "the good old professor. How is he? Oh, how long have you two been shagging? I bet he's old and patient, preparing you like that so you're not all sore in the morning. Slow and boring, he must be, mustn't he?"

Sherlock looked at him with loathing. He felt a twisting, a tightening in his gut wringing out tighter and tighter, but before he could say anything, Jim chimed on merrily.

"He makes you frustrated, doesn't he? You think you're in love with him, but he doesn't love you back. He thinks you're just a good shag a night because his wife isn't probably as tight as you."

The twist inside got tighter and tighter, and he almost blurted out that John wasn't old and married. Nevertheless, he simply smirked, "You're just jealous I'm with someone else."

At this Jim stopped short—and then laughed. Shrilly. Unsettlingly. Laughed till Sherlock could see tears in his eyes, "Jealous?! Me? How many times do I have to prove that I own you now, Sherlock? I'm the only one who can give you what you need. I'm not going to be jealous of you fucking someone else when you truly belong to me, am I?"

With this, he smirked and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Sherlock's mouth. A kiss that Sherlock had felt building between them since the first time he unwillingly admitted to himself how similar they were.

Sherlock went still. Frozen and shocked, as Jim continued his assault on his mouth, as he felt the soft slickness of Jim's tongue tracing and mapping out the insides of his mouth with practiced ease. All he could see was pale skin and dark hair as Jim cupped his face and continued to kiss him, occasionally biting down on his lower lip and pressing himself flush against Sherlock's nonresponsive body.

"So lovely," Jim whispered, "to finally let go of all that delicious frustration, isn't it, Sherlock?"

Sherlock had never felt so weak and conflicted before. Up close, he was nothing like John, couldn't simply trust his body to a man that wasn't John, couldn't close his eyes. But his lips were. Soft and pliant, the fit of them perfect together. His chin and his cheeks were unbelievably smooth under Sherlock's fingers. He splayed his palms on Jim's chest but was unable to shove him away.

He couldn't—shouldn't have been so weak as to succumb to Moriarty's games, but somehow he couldn't find any strength in himself. John had stripped him of that last night.

Jim took the initiative and pressed the keel of his hand onto Sherlock's burgeoning arousal. Instead of horror and dread, all he found himself capable of thinking was how much he should spread his legs so as to not prove Jim right, even if it didn't matter anymore. Jim had him there.

He could feel Jim's fingers massaging the bulge between his legs. He knew he was canting his hips up for Jim. Jim who didn't reject him and spurn him at every step—

_No, stop,_ his brain ordered, but he wasn't capable of caring anymore.

Jim, who was like him. Jim, who knew exactly what he felt and needed. Jim, who could kill for him. His touch nothing like John's bold and endearing caresses, his tentative fingers almost exploring what it felt like to be with a man—

"Feels good, doesn't it?" Jim whispered, close to his lips as Sherlock inhaled sharply at the cross-eyed sight of him, "I bet he doesn't blow you off. Old prude's too proud to suck or even touch you," he undid Sherlock's jeans and slipped his hand inside. He applied just the right pressure, enough to make Sherlock ball his fist into his mouth to contain his moan, "there."

"St—stop—" Sherlock forced out of his mouth. Something that was distinctly a baser, more disgusting part of himself that he hadn't yet learnt the control of, was hindering his fight-or-flight instincts.

"Oh, I'll get the name out of your pretty lips. And then we'll get the annoying professor out of the way, won't we? And then you and I can play together. Forever. What a shame. Wasting yourself with that man when you can be with me."

Sherlock let out a small whine, his heart thundering in his chest. He tried to push Jim away, he really did, but something about the way he pushed only drew Jim closer to him. He was conscious of his heartbeat in his ears, of Jim's erection pressing into his thigh and of his hand between his legs. Sherlock pressed his mouth to Jim's before he could form the soft 'o' of John's name on his lips, and Jim only chuckled when he mistook it for Sherlock's eagerness.

"Don't worry," he whispered before he leaned in to run his tongue over Sherlock's neck, "This place is usually empty, you'd know. But I'd love it if your lovely professor came up here, saw us at it. How much fun would that be?"

That snapped Sherlock of his lust-induced daze. He swore and tore his mouth from Jim's with as much strength as he could muster. He resisted pushing a knee into Jim's groin and gazed at him with utmost loathing, "You're sick."

Jim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sherlock felt triumph for the little moment when Jim's face was furious with rejection and a little shocked at Sherlock's vehemence, "And yet you want me. How different can I be from you after all, Sherlock?"

"I wouldn't touch you even if my life depended on it!" Sherlock spat venomously, zipping up his jeans.

"You're still hard. Such a pretty sight—"

In a shocking moment, Sherlock crossed the distance between Jim and himself, towering over him as he dug his fingers into Jim's shoulders, making Jim smile instead of wincing at the pain, "Karma will catch up with what you've done. Pricks like you always get their comeuppance in some way or another, Moriarty."

Moriarty stayed silent for a second, and Sherlock foolishly thought that he had got to him. But then, he narrowed his eyes, "Oh well, that's it? Pity. And I honestly thought it was going to be a good joke."

He howled into laughter, shaking his head and tutting at Sherlock, "One day you'll come to me, Sherlock. When all the world's against you, I will be the person you'll seek."

With that, he left Sherlock reeling with revulsion towards himself as Jim walked away, free from what John believed to be karma. Free from justice itself.

 

* * *

 

"CR?" John called after he was finished before time with his lecture, "Kindly distribute the answer scripts."

A short, freckled boy rose with a nod as John could hear grumbling from the rest of his class. They never really liked receiving their papers and then their shortcomings being discussed as well, and John never really liked being on the receiving end of it. John didn't know why, but he was starting to feel that somehow, he was becoming less and less likeable to his students of late.

He couldn't figure out why.

He tried not to glance at Sherlock, who was sprawled against his chair in a carelessly arrogant way, uncaring and unmoving. He tried not to succumb to the floor and hide behind his desk when he felt the papers leaving his grip. He had done what he had to. There was no going back and that didn't make his embarrassment any less. Once out of his hand, Sherlock's answer sheet was bound to reach him. John didn't know any other way to communicate with him. Yes, he had his address and he had his phone number and he could make another late-night encounter to his flat like yesterday (well, technically today) and he could make him stay behind in the class—oh yes, he could certainly do that. But this, what he had done now, it made him feel like a primary school girl writing a love letter to her crush and leaving it unnamed and unsigned. And John thought better of it than to be face-to-face with him, in case Sherlock should make fun of him or something—since such things did seem to set Sherlock off into laughter and make John feel persecuted for feeling the most natural of human emotions. It had been really hard, coming up with this.

He was almost glad that Jim Moriarty did not share this class with Sherlock.

Except what he had inserted between the sheets of Sherlock's answer paper was not a letter. He really hoped that the concept of a hint wasn't lost on Sherlock, even though he really was oblivious to such prompts and hints when he was on the receiving end of them—sometimes.

His heart leapt to his throat when he saw Sherlock touch his answer paper. John had thought long and hard the previous night after he had understood that his extremely poor concentration on his current research paper would continue to elude him if he didn't set down to doing something about Sherlock.

And so he had set down with it, kept his heart on a sleeve and had come up with what Sherlock was probably going to see as he opened his paper.

John's complete attention was on Sherlock; the rest of the world became an inconsequential blur around him. He felt like time would stand still when Sherlock would open the paper and see—

And then, without even a look, Sherlock dumped the answer sheet into his bookbag—and John's heart sank. The weight felt so heavy that it was as if someone was dragging him down underwater and he was struggling against it to stay floating.

John soon endeavoured to correct it.

"Now, everyone pay attention please," John announced, "I will not be letting anyone out of here until I'm finished, yeah? Those who think that they're very clever—" and at this point he threw Sherlock a very convincing glare and was met by a pair of hollow grey eyes and an expression that John did not like one bit, "and have put their scripts inside their bags promptly, take 'em out."

There was a gentle murmur of dissent.

"Well, you don't even have the lab class today, remember? Otherwise you'd have to tolerate me for another hour," John protested, "Let's not be children please, people. Take those papers out, and if you're fond of being smart, you can prove it on the whiteboard," he jerked his head towards it, "here, alright?"

John was not surprised to see Sherlock not listening to what he was saying at all.

"And you too, Mr. Holmes," John said loudly, with a pang in his heart at what he was going to say next, "Yes, you've received top scores again and you may think that you don't need this discussion, but believe me, you do."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, and the hollowness in his eyes instantly turned into irritation. With a huff, he took it out and John continued, trying his best not to watch out for Sherlock's reaction.

In the end, he didn't have to continue his charade of discussing the harder questions with a group of near-murderous couples being forced to study on the Valentine's Day for very long, for Sherlock had suddenly understood that his paper weighed heavier than usual and he had opened it and looked at John, his eyes open and expressive like the last night—and perhaps shocked—at John's daring.

John's fingers trembled as he turned at that very instant and proceeded to draw the full diagram that outlined in detail the mediastinum and the pericardium of the heart. His bruised knuckles protested against the strain and he made quick work of the diagram.

Sherlock did not meet his eyes the entire lecture, not even when John dismissed the class, not even when John tried to meet his eye, not even when John felt his heartbeat becoming sickeningly rapid at the thought that if Sherlock took the hint, he'd be physically as close to him as he had been yesterday. He'd be alone, once again, in a room with Sherlock and he frankly felt daunted at what could happen between them.

That depended on whether Sherlock had understood the hint at all.

When the class, and subsequently the corridor became empty, John proceeded towards the first staff gents he could find and as hurriedly as he could. He went inside, put his bag away from him, took off his glasses and eyed himself from top to bottom. He didn't even know what had possessed him to do that. Oh, he was mental, completely mental. John shook his head. Sherlock was never going to come. Of course he wasn't going to. What had he ever done to deserve someone like Sherlock?

Ten minutes, John thought. And then he'd leave. If Sherlock came. . . yes, he'd do that. Thank him for letting John stay at his place when he couldn't stand his own. And tell him that he was angry but none of that mattered anymore and he knew that Sherlock hadn't said it out of spite. Sherlock was right and John couldn't be angry for that.

Okay fine. Fifteen minutes and then he'd leave, he crossed his heart.

Still, John checked whether he looked proper. There were bags under his eyes, his hair was slightly untidy from trying to comb his hair by his fingers clumsily. He smelled alright, nothing that could put Sherlock off in the slightest.

John looked around himself. Perhaps the staff gents wasn't a very nice place for a rendezvous.

He spun around at the knock at the door. He stayed where he was—for a moment—immobile and basically paralysed with joy and anticipation, although that wasn't a very desirable response. He felt himself going into a flight-or-fight mindset.

Sherlock was here, John thought, his chest heaving. The only think keeping them apart was the door and John's inability to open it. Without further thought, John gulped and walked towards the door, trying to keep his composure. He felt his hands trembling—but he took a breath to steady himself—it was just Sherlock, they had done this before, if only once, nothing new or nothing that should be daunting. If only he'd stop being tense over it, maybe he could just stop thinking about all of it and for once, not let all the bullshit win over what he had for Sherlock.

John took a deep breath, ready to open the door and drag Sherlock right in. Best avoid anyone who could be snooping around.

But when he opened the door, he found himself face to face with his senior. John had to blink twice even after telling himself that he was having no hallucinations and that it really wasn't Sherlock. Oh, of course, old men frequently needed to empty their bladders, didn't they?

For a moment, Simpson stared at John, as if equally stupefied that John was here and he had _locked_ the restroom door. And then his senses kicked in.

"Whatever the hell you're doing, Dr. Watson?" Simpson snapped, eyeing John's bandaged knuckles. John had to resist the temptation to hide them from him, as if the wound itself contained a secret whispered between Sherlock and himself, "Let me in."

John stood there like a figurine, blinking and trying to form his thoughts into a coherent order, but Simpson heaved a breath, "Oh, for God's sake!"

John wanted to ask whether the HoD's office really did not have an en-suite restroom—and then thought better not to ask such a quaint question to a no-nonsense man like Simpson. Before John could even turn around, Simpson was already closing the door of the urinal behind him with an audible thud. John collapsed against a washbasin. What was he supposed to do? Oh, wouldn't it be lovely if Sherlock decided to drop in at this moment, and then have the two archenemies (even though they weren't supposed to be there in real life) face each other in the restroom? Wouldn't it be lovely for John's boss to figure out what John had for the one person he hated the most. . .

John stopped thinking. He told himself that he was simply being paranoid.

He glanced at his watch. His fifteen minutes were over. He was supposed to leave. He should leave. He had a lot of work to do. He had to spend at the least four more hours editing his paper before he could forward it to the readers at King's. It was a little unusual, so he had thought better of it than letting Simpson take a look and ban it forever from the academic sphere.

The noises that came from the urinal were disturbing. Wheezing sounds, like Simpson was being choked to death there. John started, thinking what to do, except calling out, "Sir, are you alright?"

"I'm—" wheeze, splutter, "—fine!" John was sure that he sounded like a lot like a sick Sherlock probably would: irritating and insufferable.

"Sir, do you need me to open the door?" John called out, concerned for the old man even though he hadn't forgiven him for conspiring to fail Sherlock in his trimester.

"I'm fine, Dr. Watson! Go away!"

John resisted a 'yes, sir' to get the hell out of there and didn't stop until he reached the end of the corridor. He looked down at the floor and gathered his courage. Sherlock hadn't come. Maybe he would. The next time.

Maybe.

_But it's too late now, isn't it? There's no us. And even if there were, there would be no more time for us._

For this one time, this one time, John kept his heart on his sleeve and decided to keep his faith in them, even if the stakes were high. He'd prove Sherlock wrong this one time. He'd prove to him that there was all the time in the world. That it was never too late.

Maybe.

 

* * *

 

As the day passed by, John's spirits dampened as every hour dragged on. He'd had two more lectures since the last one with Sherlock. Sherlock had not showed up during the four hours that John had spent up holed in the lab, working with a graduate assistant who Sherlock would have deemed the most boring person in the world.

Sherlock hadn't showed up during his precious recess minutes.

Sherlock hadn't showed up during any of the little five to ten minutes between his lectures.

John was still hopeful. Still waiting for his face to appear in his door. At the rate, it was only a day. He'd gladly wait a week.

Still, it'd have been nice, not to mention a tiny bit romantic and very stupid, considering that today was Valentine's Day. Sherlock would laugh at John if he ever mentioned it to him, which he wasn't going to, obviously.

He shook his head, and sent the email with the read-only document. Stared at the computer screen, fingers lingering on the bruise Sherlock had kissed. He should go back home, but he didn't want to move from there. The sun was setting outside the lab window. It was evening and he had just missed his usual bus. His chair gave an annoyed creak; usually it was relieved of its duties by this time, but John didn't pay it the slightest attention.

"What is this?"

John was startled out of his reverie to see a Sherlock Holmes storming towards him like a whirlwind. John gazed at him. It should've been made impossible for someone to be so exquisite and so unreachable at the same time.

John couldn't verbalise what he felt when he saw Sherlock closing the lab door behind him. He had understood. And he had come. He was giving John another chance.

Sherlock arrived at his desk. To an outsider, he would've looked livid, but John could see that he looked conflicted and defiant and angry and somewhat scared and vulnerable. John's somewhat high spirits retired to their fallen state again and all he wanted to do was to take away all the misgivings from Sherlock's life, since he was the major reason behind them.

The man slammed a paper on the desk, the same paper that John had inserted between his answer sheets.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded.

John stood up. It was just possible that Sherlock was upset about previous night. Except that Sherlock was never really upset about such things.

"It's. . . my schedule," he said sheepishly. He felt like he had given away a part of himself with that.

"Of course I can see that it's your schedule," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes, "My question is the explanation for what it had been doing in my answer sheet."

John's first response would've been an exasperated sigh about Sherlock's most inconvenient obliviousness, but Sherlock's timing made him stop. If Sherlock really had been oblivious, being the curious person that he was, he wouldn't have held out for so long. Therefore. . .

"You _really_ don't know?" John challenged him.

"No I don't. Kindly explain to this lesser mortal," Sherlock said dryly.

"Weren't you the one who wanted to be failed so that you could get yourself improvement private tuitions from me?"

Sherlock frowned, "What's that got to—?"

"So, that's my schedule," John looked down at his desk, and then stole a glance of Sherlock, "so that you never have to think of an excuse when you want to see me. When I'm free, of course."

John felt his heart falling back into the pit when he saw Sherlock's defences coming up. It wasn't very difficult to tell, considering how much he'd seen of Sherlock. He braced himself for rejection, for Sherlock mocking his feelings. He told himself that he wouldn't fight this time.

"Oh _really_?" the mocking tone came in, "And pray tell why you would do that."

"Because I—" John faltered, unable to continue. Why was Sherlock being like this now? When John finally found the courage to cast everything aside and be with him?

"Just because I let you sleep at my place yesterday, it doesn't mean that I'm available for a shag again!"

John felt colour rising in his cheeks. For some time, he was unable to find his own voice. He knew that Sherlock had purposefully aimed for such hollow, false accusations so that John would recoil back into his shell, but not this time. He'd gladly be hurt if only it healed Sherlock.

"Is that. . . what you think of me?" He said tightly. He hadn't meant it to, and yet it came out as angry.

For one second, Sherlock looked almost regretful, but then his features became cold again, "That's what you keep saying, isn't it? _I took advantage you, I took advantage of you_ over and over again!"

John swallowed back the helplessness, "Sherlock, you know that's not what I—how I," his eyes flickered to Sherlock's desperately, "You know that's not what I feel for you."

"Then what, except for a sense of rebellion and a readily available shag?!" Sherlock barked.

"Jesus Christ, Sherlock. You've lost your mind! Do you even know what you're talking about?" John spat, all his expectations rapidly vanishing in the air.

"Oh, I've lost my mind?" Sherlock all but snarled.

"Yes, you have! I was—and I still am—fucking straight, and I will goddamned continue to be fucking straight for the rest of my life! It's not like I look at you and sex is the first thing that pops into my mind, yeah? You know that, you always told me that I was straight and it goes against all logic that I would be with you for only a shag. So why're you saying something like that?"

"Oh, wow, John Watson is straight!" Sherlock scoffed and John felt his fists shaking with the effort to not hit Sherlock, "Then he discovered the wonders of gay sex and now he wants _more."_

_Control_ , John told himself,  _he doesn't mean it because he's contradicting what he said once upon a time. He's upset about last night. He's only provoking you into driving the two of you apart once again. Don't give in. Let him spit it all out._

If you're oh-so-straight," Sherlock said bitterly, "then why am I the exception?"

For one moment, John was thrown off-guard, "I don't know."

"There," with the sneer on his face, Sherlock had a  note of triumph in his voice, the triumph of being right even after defeat, "wonders of gay sex. If I hadn't tried hard, I would've been just another student for you."

The realisation hit John like a gut punch when he understood that Sherlock was right. John wouldn't have thought of him in a less chaste way if Sherlock hadn't made him spare a thought for it.

He inhaled a sharp intake of breath, followed by a stubborn, "No."

Sherlock frowned at him. John clenched his fists, his prepared words to Sherlock entirely forgotten.

 "You've given me one hell of a speech, Sherlock," he chuckled humorlessly, "I won't say anything to rival it, except maybe a 'no'."

For a moment, Sherlock looked taken aback and refused to meet John's eyes, "Why else would you give me your schedule?"

John stared at him incredulously for a beat. What was he supposed to say about something that didn't make any sense to even him? That his schedule was a part of what he was and that's why he wanted Sherlock to have it. It definitely sounded something that wouldn't make any sense to Sherlock.

"It was—the only way I could. . ." he faltered, trying to find his words, "well, you know—"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, "I know what?"

_Okay, here we go._ John took a deep breath, "Ahem. . . I just wanted to. . . well, about last night. I really didn't mean to get angry, okay? It's just, my career decision is a very sensitive issue with me. I'd avoid talking about it if I were you, got that?"

Sherlock only murmured something under his breath that John was unable to make out, but he was sure that it would be a string of  _truth is truth, John_. He nodded to himself. There, he had said it.

"So basically you smuggled me your schedule because you felt guilty about shouting at me?" Sherlock remarkedwith raised eyebrows.

_Oh God how can a genius like you be so unacquainted with the concept of a hint_ , John lamented inwardly.

"I didn't shout."

Sherlock watched him carefully, "So you weren't looking for a shag per free time." It was a statement in the guise of a question.

"Um, no. I'm not a depraved man starving for some hookup."

Sherlock stared at him, obviously waiting. John resigned himself to the knowledge that he couldn't be figurative without embarrassing himself.

"Well, um, how did you sleep last night?"

"Cut to the chase," Sherlock said sharply. John inhaled another heavy breath.

"So, just so—just so we're on the same page, that's not how I feel about you, okay? You're not just some hookup. You know that better than I do. When I came to you that night, yeah it was sort of a getaway for me from the world. I don't deny it. And that night _was._ . . amazing, yeah, it was . . . like you said, beyond perfect. But that— _that_ —whatever you say, that wasn't right. I wasn't in the best mental shape and you were vulnerable. It was selfish."

"What's that got to do with you giving me a copy of your schedule?"

"Yeah, yeah," John swallowed, "that part's coming," he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, "Look, I know I'm an absolute sodding fool and I—I screw up a lot. I mean, look at me. You're right, I don't even belong here, Sherlock. I'm a moron. . . and a coward and I have no sense of right and wrong, you're right. The only thing I'm best at doing is ending up in front of your door pissed—in every sense," he inhaled sharply and he could feel Sherlock's eyes boring into him, but he went on with his heart in his mouth, "and I keep fighting whatever good happens to me just because I think it's not bloody right."

"I think it would be wise if you—" Sherlock began, but John put up a hand to stop him.

"Please let me try and get this out. You're—" he swallowed and said in a tight voice, "just stay shut up till I finish, okay? Don't make this any more difficult for me. Or I might end up. . . punching you or something."

Sherlock didn't say anything, simply stared numbly at him. John felt an odd twist of satisfaction at that.

"I don't even belong here. You said it yourself. But when you're . . ." he looked down at Sherlock's hands, thought about what they could do to him, "when you're near, everything else is far away. I forget it all. It's bearable white noise. And when you kiss me," he glanced at Sherlock's lips, "Well," he cleared his throat, feeling thoroughly embarrassed, "I know where I belong."

John felt a hot feeling at the back of his throat with Sherlock looking so lost and stunned. He wanted to shake Sherlock by his shoulders, he wanted to hear him say something. Anything at all. But Sherlock remained disconcertingly still.

"You're always right, Sherlock, always. But not this time. Because we're not done. Just. . . give me another chance, please, and you'll see. Give your professor another chance," he bowed his head and closed his eyes when he felt treacherous tears in his eyes again, "because you are, and you always will be, more than just a student to me."

He remained standing with as much austerity as possible, everything to not let Sherlock know how frayed his nerves were. Inwardly thanked Sherlock for probably blacking out because John couldn't get a grip on himself for a long time. The silence hung between them, overbearing in its presence and strangely, John did not care what Sherlock was going to say.

_Control_ , he scolded himself inwardly. There was a part of him which kept saying that now that he had done the right thing, maybe Sherlock would back out. Because that's what always happened. Something always went awry when all was on the way to good.

Unexpectedly, he found two lanky arms encircling his waist, and before he knew it, Sherlock had walked around his desk and was pressing John to his heart and John finally learnt what true, pure happiness felt like.

"Sherlock. . ." he breathed out, and allowed himself to relax despite every nerve in his body being on fire. He hated his instincts which made him do a double check of the partially open window.

"Cowards don't fight, John," Sherlock's adamant, impossible voice sounded in his ear, "you're anything but a coward. But I must say that the moron part is slightly less debatable."

John didn't know if he laughed at that or not. John did not know if he pressed himself against the man or not. For there it was again, under the odour of detergent and iodine, the raw scent of _Sherlock_ which filled John's nostrils and his entire self and nothing else mattered. For there he was again, the glimpse of the old Sherlock winking at him, perhaps even laughing at the sappiness of his little speech, hidden behind shiny impenetrable armour that John vowed to make good riddance of.

"You don't know how long I've waited to hear those words," Sherlock whispered.

John just held on to his anchor, a pinch of Sherlock's shirt in his grip, finding his peace at the eye of the hurricane. He felt a light kiss to the crown of his head and he knew where he belonged.

And no more words were needed.


End file.
